Book Review: Night Pleasures - by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Synopsis: Night Pleasures is the 3rd installment in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. Kyrian of Thrace (who was mentioned but not really seen in the prequel Fantasy Lover) is a Dark-Hunter, an ancient Greek who sold his soul to the goddess Artemis in exchange for immortality and a shot at vengeance against those who wronged him in life. As a part of the bargain, he has to spend the rest of eternity hunting down and killing these vampire-like bad guys called Daimons, who run around by night sucking the souls out of humans. Of course he's also really ripped, badass, and can't go out in daylight. The story opens with him being captured and handcuffed to a human woman named Amanda (our heroine, of course), an accountant with a marked distaste for anything outside of the realm of ordinary life. Unfortunately, she's stuck with Kyrian until they can get the cuffs off and there's this REALLY bad daimon named Desiderius out to kill them both. This one, like Fantasy Lover, also has a New Orleans setting and I was happy to see Julian and Grace both make appearances in this story.

Since I'm pretty new to the whole "paranormal romance" genre, I approached this book with some trepidation. However, I decided to try it because I liked Fantasy Lover so well. Sherrilyn Kenyon really knows how to draw a reader into a story and accept what you're reading. We are introduced to the world and mythology of the Dark-Hunters through Amanda's eyes. Since she's human like us (well, not exactly like us, but close), we get to experience her range of emotions as she comes to terms with the un-reality of her situation as well as her acceptance of the strange and supernatural stuff that's going on around her. Of course, it helps her that she has a crackpot family who's into the occult, but she's a total skeptic about the whole thing. The love scenes are pretty intense, but not overdone so they don't hinder the story like happens in some other romance novels. I think the romance itself is excellent and the way that Amanda helps Kyrian overcome his weaknesses makes them both stronger characters. Night Pleasures is by far one of my favorites in this series.

I gave this one 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog!