Book Review: Fantasy Lover - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Synopsis: Julian is an ancient Macedonian general cursed by the gods to spend eternity trapped inside a book, only to be let out occasionally for brief stints to serve as a sex slave. Grace Alexander, a modern-day lonely heart sex therapist, meets Julian when she and her kooky best friend summon him from his book on a lark. He is bound by his curse to, er, meet Grace's needs for one month and must then return to his imprisonment. After 2,000 years of being summoned and used for his body, Julian is surprised to find that Grace treats him as a person and not just a sex object. Although she does spend a good deal of time drooling over his hotness, she doesn't feel right about using him for sex. She is the first woman who has ever considered his feelings and given him hope for a chance at freedom from his cursed existence.

Fantasy Lover is the prequel to Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series. It doesn't really have anything to do with the Dark-Hunters, but we do meet some of the characters who surface in future DH novels, including Kyrian of Thrace. It's set in New Orleans, which I really liked since that's where we spent our honeymoon and I was familiar with a lot of the landmarks that are mentioned in the book. Also, there's a good deal of classical mythology woven into the plot, which appeals to my inner geek.

Now I've never read "paranormal" romance before, so this was kind of a new thing for me. I've seen those vampire romances in the bookstore before and always thought they looked a little cheesy. However, this series was highly recommended by the folks on my romance readers message board in LibraryThing, so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I decided to have an open mind about it because I REALLY liked this book! I felt like the hero's character was really fleshed out (yes, I know I'm so punny) and I must say, the ending of the book was rather gripping. So good I decided to go ahead and read the first in the Dark-Hunters series and see if it was just as good.

I rated this book in my LibraryThing catalog at 5 stars.