CBR2 Book 43: "Succubus Shadows" by Richelle Mead

Publisher: Kensington
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: April 4th, 2010
Date finished: April 5th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE GEORGINA KINCAID SERIES!

Georgina Kincaid is an unhappy succubus. The man she loves is marrying one of her best friends, mainly because of the guilt he feels over the affair they had when Georgina temporarily lost her soul-sucking powers. Now her friend wants her to be a bridesmaid, and help plan the wedding. There's another succubus in town as well, who is trying to put the moves on Seth, not that it appears to be working too well. Roman, her roommate, seems to have gone from wanting to kill her to wanting to romance her - and she keeps having strange, dreamlike visions every time she's depressed (which is often) tempting her towards suicide.

I really need to start getting the Georgina Kincaid books with the UK covers. The US covers keep getting more awful with each book, as illustrated by this one. The UK one is much nicer, really need to get on that. In the previous book, I spent a lot of the book being really annoyed with Georgina and Seth. They were both behaving badly, now they have to deal with the aftermath of their actions. Georgina spends a lot of the book trapped in a sort of dreamworld, forced to relive both true and untrue memories from her past. We find out quite a lot more of what made her the person she is now, and there are more hints about her contract binding her to eternal service as a succubus is not entirely as it should be. Someone also seems willing to kill to keep Georgina from finding out what is really going on.

These books are entertaining enough, but I don't love them. Still, I've grown to know the characters, and unless Richelle Mead plans to string the series out for as long as Janet Evanovich without anything changing the status quo, I will probably keep reading them, just to see what happens.

CBR2 Book 18: "Succubus Heat" by Richelle Mead

Publisher: Kensington
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: January 1st, 2010
Date finished: January 5th, 2010

WARNING! THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE SERIES!

Georgina Kincaid is a succubus. This means her main goal in her eternal life is to sleep with men and steal their life-force. This happens every time she gets intimate with a man whether she wants it or not. Georgina has been in a foul mood since her boyfriend, bestselling author Seth Mortensen, broke up with her a few months back. None of her friends like her current boyfriend (they all think she can do better), and her boss, Seattle's arch-demon (who looks just like John Cusack) is so sick of her cranky attitude that he sends her to Canada to work for (and spy on) the arch-demon there.

As Georgina keeps running into Seth at the bookstore where she works (even the eternally damned need a day job) she is a bit relieved to get away from Seattle. However, her mission in Canada is to break up an inept wannabe Satanist cult, and this proves more difficult than previously expected. Then her boss, Jerome, suddenly gets himself summoned, and Georgina, and all the other demonic creatures who worked under him, get put in a sort of paranormal stasis. Georgina no longer has her succubus powers - and than means she's no longer a danger to Seth, whom she still very much loves, and wants. The only obstacle is that he's now dating her friend and co-worker Maddie, who's crazy about him.

This is the fourth Georgina Kincaid novel by Richelle Mead, and over the course of the books, she's done a good job of building up the cast of characters and slowly revealing more of the paranormal world the stories take place in. I really enjoyed the first three books, and was actually very upset with Mead for breaking Georgina and Seth up. In this book, however, Georgina's friends keep telling her to stop being a whiny bitch, and I must admit I very much agreed with them. She keeps sulking and being generally annoying, all through the book, and while her current boyfriend may not be awesome, she treats him like dirt. I was not happy with the direction her suddenly non-powered status made her take, and think both she and Seth are massively less likable now. A character from a previous book who I like makes his return in this one, though, and the end of the book does offer hope that Georgina will be less of a pill in coming novels - so I have hopes for the sequel, which is out at the end of March