Not as epic as Roadkill but still an awesome entry in the Cal Leandros series. I love Cal. An entire book could be about him wandering New York for a day and I'd gobble it all up.

Seeing Cal take stock of his life was really interesting, until it got a little repetitive after half the book had gone by. I know it's realistic that he'd go around in circles trying to figure out his life this way, but at the same time, I was itching for Cal to be back to one hundred percent. And when he finally was, it was quite glorious.

I'm not sure what I thought about the epilogue.

Spoiler

It seemed like Thurman threw that in to make sense of What's-Her-Name constantly asking about Cal's brothers and sisters, which could easily have been fixed up by Cal explaining how Team Leandros killed all the Auphe. Instead we get a creepy epilogue that feels like it's trying to keep the Auphe mystique alive when you don't need that at all, not with Cal's Auphe side constantly growing and evolving the way it does.

But anyway. A great read and 3.5 stars.

This book had some serious backstory to it, the sort of meat that most series will have come up with after book three or four. Touch the Dark knocks it out of the park all at once, which was both good and bad. Good, because it gave it much more substance than most urban fantasy novels. Bad, because there were pages and pages of exposition and explanations of magic and vampires and politics instead of having anything really happen. And while the sexy bits were nice, it felt like they kinda came out of nowhere.

3.5 stars

After the last two seasons of True Blood, I love being reminded that there's a Sookie out there who can still take matters into her own hands and take care of her own problems.

Spoiler

I nearly cheered out loud when she finally kicked everyone out of her house. Except Dermot, I love him.

The plot was a little thin, stretching out between the main vampire plot, Sandra Pelt trying to kill Sookie, and the mystery of her fae family. But I enjoyed it all, and I'm in love with Sookie all over again.

Goddamn, this book needs to come with a warning.

I suppose the summary should be enough, but honestly, it did nothing to prepare me for how painful Harley's journey is, from start to finish. I kept reading on, dreading the next page even as I had to know more, to see how everyone turned out, to stay with Harley.

It's going to take me a while to recover from this.