by Nina Croft
All magic has a price. And now the balance is overdue.
A witch with the power to see the future, Gina led a sheltered existence until the vampire, Darius Cole, crashed into her life, abducting her, seducing her, forging an emotional bond between them. Then circumstances tore them apart and the bond faded–until twenty one years later they are drawn together to save their daughter.
While their passion is rekindled, Gina can offer Darius nothing, and she feels his bitterness and the Darkness within him, threatening to take control. Only she has the power to draw him back, but will this be the last time they make love for eternity?
Review:
The Darkness takes place almost immediately after the events of The Prophecy and involved the parents of that book’s heroine. Darius and Gina both played a part in the first book, but we see much more of them (in every sense 😉 ) here. I suppose this one could be read on its own–the important events from the first book are mostly explained–but I think you’d do much better following along if you’ve read Raven’s book first. Honestly, I’d really recommend binge reading them together–they’re pretty short, so it won’t take up too much of your time and I really think it would give you a much more complete experience. Even the mere week that was in between when I read them seemed too much–I felt like I spent more time getting up to speed than I would have liked (to be fair, though, I read a lot of other books in that week, which muddied the details a bit).This book is really just Gina and Darius’s story–other characters play a very minor role and have minimum page time. The secondary characters with the biggest roles are two of Gina’s relatives–one because she has slightly more page time (but isn’t terribly sympathetic–I’m interested to see how/if Ms. Croft can make me like her more in future books) and the other because she pretty much gets our hero and heroine to their HEA. (Like in the first book, the revelation of how to get the characters there turns out to be amazingly simple–I am almost ashamed that I needed to be told what the solution was! But so did Darius, so there’s that…)
As much as I liked Darius and Gina here (and I did like them!) I would have liked to also have seen a bit more of their “before” story, since theirs is a second chance romance. With such a limited amount of pages, however, that’s not really feasible–Ms. Croft does a decent job of showing how and why they didn’t make it before through the characters’ revelations, though, and gives us hope for the future.
Fingers crossed that we don’t have to wait too long for a book 3!
(Once again, this is a re-issue of an earlier book. I didn’t read that version, though, so I can’t say what was different or how it compares.)
Rating: 4 stars / B
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
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