In Review: The Darkest Passion by Gena Showalter

Released 5/25/10     448 pages

Publisher HQN Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN978-0373774555

The keeper of Wraith and an Angel falling in love? If never in a million years was your answer, you’d be so wrong. In Gena Showalter’s latest Lords of the Underworld she pairs these two unlikely people together, and sits back and watches the sparks fly.

Aeron has always been one of my favorites, in past novels he has shown both loyalty and unwavering strength. He is acerbic, but there is more than just the gruffness. He doesn’t want or need Olivia, and he makes it clear. His surrogate daughter Legion is all he needs. But Olivia sacrificed everything to get to know this man she is suppose to kill, and he need to do that grated on my nerves just a bit. She spied on him, and now that she’s vulnerable and decides that she wants him he’s just suppose to fall down on his knees?

Olivia is probably the least likable of all the heroines that Ms. Showalter has written to date. It’s not that she’s weak, but whinny, which may just be worse. She was his intended assassin until she decided she loved him. Stalker much? And now she’s desperate to bed him, because someone else is coming to do the job she couldn’t. She has no powers, or apparent brains. And she constantly cries, seriously in what universe does a guy like Aeron fall for this?

Well, this is a romance novel, so the world throws conflict at them, and they do fall in love.  The wit and character interaction are what really hold the story together. Aeron is just as hard headed as Wraith and some of the conversations were priceless.  The writing seemed flawless, following the typical pattern  Ms. Showalter has displayed before the tragic climax, leading to the last resort sacrifice, and ultimately followed by the happy ending, but the happy ending is sort of ruined by horrific findings. I understand it opens the platform up for further books, but throwing so much information at readers at so late in the stage, literally the last chapter, really kills the book. It felt incomplete, like it was just added on as an ‘oh by the way.’ Overall the ending made me feel cheated.