A review by jenagregoire
Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

5.0

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I love serial killers?!?!?!? Ok, that may have come out wrong. I don’t want to send all your shrinks out there into a feeding frenzy. What I mean is that serial killers fascinate me. Not the gruesome end of it or anything like that. I am just blown away by the intricacies of their planning sometimes. That kind of planning and the reasons behind it combined take one EFFED UP brain and I just love it. Well, Fair Game gives you a taste of that mixed up with a little bit of the supernatural. Ok, more than a little bit but you know what I mean!

I had mentioned in my reviews of the preceding books in this series that when I went into the series, I expected a Mercy Thompson clone of a book. That’s definitely not what this series is at all but Fair Game kind of brought the very organic world of Anna and Charles into the edgy and somewhat gritty world that we readers are used to in the Mercy world. It was fun to see them step over that line. However, it was slightly out of place to see them there. We were also graced with the presence of the ever awesome Mr. Adam Hauptman in this book. It’s very brief but it is certainly classic Adam. Can not WAIT for the next Mercy!

As we all know, Patty Briggs is just fantastic with character development. Anna is so far from the woman that she was 3 books ago and that change in her is drastically spotlighted in this book. She’s put in a situation when she needs to really prove that she’s not broken anymore and I was just beaming with pride for her. Although it’s a horrible situation, it was definitely needed. As readers, we needed to see that she’s really there and whole.

Charles. Charles is such a fuddy duddy but I love him. He really is a great character and he’s going through some heavy stuff throughout this book that make you just want to reach in and give him a hug. It also kind of makes you want to reach in and smack the crap out of him because rather than leaning on his mate for strength (as he SHOULD be doing), he’s trying to hide it from her to protect her. Going back to what I said about Anna’s much needed moment to shine, this plays a HUGE factor in the situation with Charles. As much as he has vowed to protect her and that’s all sweet and whatever, it keeps him viewing her as a victim, even if he’s not doing it intentionally. Time to suck it up a bit and get over that or THAT will be the main focus of the next book. You’ll have to read Fair Game to find out what happens.

I got so into the serial killer case story in this book that I genuinely HATED The Big Bad by the end of the book. I happened to listen to this as an audio book and in the last 10 minutes, something happens that you so do NOT see coming that I got so blind-enraged-seeing-nothing-but-red pissed that I almost threw my iPod. No joke. Almost threw it. As much as that moment pissed me off, I left the book with a mixed feeling that could only be described as bitter satisfaction. It just didn’t feel quite……right.

Overall, I am giving this book 5 stars. I really thought that Hunting Game was going to be my favorite of this series but Fair Game brought in that edginess that made me love the Mercy series so much. It brought it up to the next level for this series and now I am really excited to see where their next book takes them.