Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter

Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter

Book Stats:
Reading level: Adult
Genre: Sci-fi Romance
Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Downtown Press
Release date: February 28, 2006

Series: Alien Huntress #1

Source: Personal Shelf

Reviewed by: Tynga

Purchase: Amazon | book Depository

RIDDING THE WORLD OF EVIL, ONE ALIEN AT A TIME: THAT'S MIA SNOW'S MISSION.

Snow is in the forecast.

In a time and place not too far away, Mia Snow is an alien huntress for the New Chicago Police Department. Heading up her expert team of Alien Investigation and Removal agents, Mia's unmatched at battling the elusive enemy among us, and she's the perfect girl for the job. She's seen her brother die at the hands of aliens. She's earned each of her scars. And she'll die before she cries. Now, a series of killings have Mia and her partner Dallas tracking alien suspects -- but a sudden blast of violence leaves Dallas fighting for his life.

They are ice and fire.

The chance to save Dallas appears in the form of a tall, erotic stranger. An alien. A murder suspect. Kyrin en Arr, of the deadly Arcadian species, holds the power to heal the injured agent but not without a price. For Mia Snow, that price is surrendering to Kyrin's forbidden seduction...and embracing their electric attraction. She's walking a knife's edge, risking her badge and even her life. The closer she gets to Kyrin, the more Mia learns about her own heart, her human needs -- and the shocking secret that will shatter everything she's ever believed.

Mia Snow, badass extraordinaire, is an alien huntress for the A.I.R. (Alien Investigation and Removal). Her job is quite simple, exterminate any alien who committed a crime against a human, but things gets complicated when she investigates a series of men kidnapping/murder. Aliens possess tons of crazy abilities, making them slippery targets and one sexy Arcadian will prove harder than most to catch!

Awaken Me Darkly was an amazing surprise for me. I guess the best way to describe this book would be sci-fi romance, you could of course put it in the PRN bundle, but it wouldn’t quite fit. Sci-fi isn’t usually my thing, but Gena Showalter really made this alien thing work for me!

The story is set in the future, not that far ahead I think, but enough to see changes in items we use everyday. For example, a lot of voice recognition systems, car drive themselves, showers are air spray thingy to save water, etc. Those changes weren’t to far fetched, and contributed to keep this world believable. Aliens invaded our planet through portals and we almost destroyed ourselves trying to get rid of them. In desperation, humanity conceded to co-habit with them only if they could destroy any alien arming humans without retribution, and the A.I.R. was born!

When I decided to pick up this series, I was a little anxious (as I always am when picking a new PRN series) that there would be too many sex scenes. I mean look at the cover! Which I’m not a fan of BTW… Gena did an amazing job to keep everything under control though. There is obvious sexual tension between Mia and Kyrin, the aforementioned Arcadian, but the sexuality is never overwhelming. It’s actually more on the sensuality side.

My favorite aspect of this novel was its amazing characters. Mia is a great strong female characters and even if it seems unlikely that such a petite woman can do so much damage, there are reasons for everything. She had a very hard past, forcing her to build a shell and I enjoyed watching her reactions when it was taken apart bit by bit. Kyrin was one mysterious an and his name should be spelled s.e.x.y. He is teaming hot and I really liked him. I just wished we got to know whim better, because even by the end of the book, I didn’t feel like I really knew him. Mia’s crew on the job was also great and I hope we’ll get to see more of Dallas in the following book. He was a key element of the plot, but he had a passive role due to some events.

I enjoyed the fast plotline but I have to say the mystery elements weren’t the strongest. I guessed the mystery surrounding Mia long before it was revealed, and guessed who the “bad boy” was pretty quickly as well. Other elements proved to be surprises though, so all in all things stayed interesting.

I really liked this first installment in the series and I hope we revisit those characters in the upcoming books. The Second book, Enslave Me Sweetly features new main characters and I’m anxious to get my hands on a copy, but I’m afraid it will be quite a challenge! I looked up online stores, stores in my area and even used bookstore without success. I can’t find a MM copy of it and the ebook is 20$ on amazon o.0 I might go nuts if I can’t find a copy!

I definitely recommend this series to PRN fans, don’t let the sci-fi element scare you away, you would really miss out on a good read!

Read an excerpt

Posted by Tynga at 07:28

 Alien, Gena Showalter, Review, Simon Schuster  9 People left their mark

Tynga is a 32 years old mom of two, from Montreal, working as a lab technician in an hospital specialized in heart disease. In her free time, she enjoys reading all things Paranormal and photography.

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