Kelly's Review: NIGHT PLEASURES

Night Pleasures

By Sherrilyn Kenyon

Book 2 in the Dark Hunter Series

St. Martin’s Press / 175 Fifth Avenue / New York, NY 10010

First Printing: October 2002

ISBN: 0-312-97998-3

Amazon; Barnes and Noble; Goodreads

Concept: “Dear Reader: Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to be immortal? To journey through the night stalking the evil that preys on humans? To have unlimited wealth, unlimited power? That is my existence, and it is dark and dangerous. I play hero to thousands, but am known to none. And I love every minutes of it.

Or so I thought until one night when I woke up handcuffed to my worst nightmare: a conservative woman in a button-down shirt. Or in Amanda's case, one buttoned all the way up to her chin. She's smart, sexy, witty, and wants nothing to do with the paranormal--in other words, me.

My attraction to Amanda Devereaux goes against everything I stand for. Not to mention the last time I fell in love it cost me not only my human life, but also my very soul. Yet every time I look at her, I find myself wanting to try again. Wanting to believe that love and loyalty do exist.

Even more disturbing, I find myself wondering if there's any way a woman like Amanda can love a man whose battle scars run deep, and whose heart was damaged by a betrayal so savage that he's not sure it will ever beat again. – Kyrian of Thrace”

Review: This is the second book in the Dark Hunter series, from a publishing date of late 2002. I mention both because I think that needs to be held in the back of your head when you read this book. I tried to keep my head wrapped around that anyway. We meet Kyrian of Thrace, a tortured-past hunk who is a Dark Hunter. We learn in this book just what a Dark Hunter is, how they came to be, and what the *bad guys* are that they are hunting. We meet some of the Dark Hunters and we get to go back and re-acquaint ourselves with Julian and Grace from Fantasy Lover (Dark Hunter #1 even though there wasn’t really a Dark Hunter in the book – trust me on this). Our girl, Amanda Devereaux (who has a sister that we meet and we end up loving in a future book) is a boring accountant who’s just coming out of a relationship. Through lots of action scenes and some actually, pretty decent jokes, we watch as these two hook up and interact with a whole slew of characters. This is a relatively small book (at like 309 pages for the mass market paperback) but there’s a lot packed into it. My personal favorite part of the story is in the last half of the book. I wasn’t overly fond of the first half so I was very happy it picked up.

What I liked: I really like the set up of the story and how it plays out in the book. Even though I personally found it slow in the beginning, I understand why it had to be there and the book absolutely picked up in the last half. The love scenes were hot, the jokes flowed easily and the bad guy was an evil turd. I love how I loved the characters. That was the best.

What I disliked: In these romance books, even though there is an element of unbelievable (vampires, etc.) there still has to be an element of believable. In my world, I don’t care HOW good looking a guy is: if he whipped of his towel in front of me and stood there waiting for me to drop and beg him to pop into bed with me, well he’d be waiting an awful long time. I find that to be completely unbelievable and in fact, it kind of pissed me off at first. A good looking guy (or girl) that is that arrogant is a complete turn off for me. I’m keeping in mind though, that this is a 2002 book. Also, the love scenes became so much better in the last half of the book, that I easily forgot the first half. It’s forgivable completely.

My rating: 4 pretty bright stars

by Kelly

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