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 34: "Succubi Like It Hot" by Jill Myles

Publisher: Pocket Star
Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: March 14th, 2010
Date finished: March 15th, 2010

Jackie Brighton has a promising new job as an archeologist, and has come to terms with the Itch (the desperate need all succubi get to have sex every other day or so) because she has two gorgeous men with which to soothe said sex cravings. Then things start getting messy. Noah refuses to share her with Zane, and claims he wants them to not see each other until she makes up her mind. Someone has put a curse on her, meaning that the Itch comes every day instead of every other, and she can put a human in a coma by just touching them. She needs to get to New Orleans to talk to Delilah, a succubus who is also a voodoo priestess.

Remy has a new porn movie to promote, so suggests they take a road trip. Jackie is upset that Noah won't speak to her, but persuades Zane to come along, as she still refuses to have sex with anyone she doesn't have feelings for (unlike Remy, who will grab any guy who is conveniently nearby). Then Zane discovers that she's cursed and leaves her stranded at a rest stop. Remy keeps being intermittently possessed and craving blood (due to events at the end of the last book) and then people start turning up dead around them.

Jackie is a lot less annoying in this book, possibly because she isn't quite as painfully gullible this time around. Towards the end of the book, she even gets of of a fairly nasty situation all by herself, showing quick thinking and ingenuity. There is more development of the secondary characters, especially Noah, who becomes a lot more interested in helping Jackie once Zane has vanished. Of course, Zane is not as callous and selfish as it first seems (as he'd make a rubbish third in a love triangle if he was). I generally liked Succubi Like It Hot a lot more than the first book, and am now looking forward to checking out the third book in the series.

CBR2 Book 33: "Gentlemen Prefer Succubi" by Jill Myles

Publisher: Pocket Star
Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: March 12th, 2010
Date finished: March 13th, 2010

I was seriously debating whether to put the cover of this one up on my blog, as it is one of the most blatant examples of mantitty (TM Smart Bitches, Trashy Books) in my entire book collection. But it is only the second book I have won ever, and the first that I've won online, and I did actually promise the author (who arranged the contest) that I would review it here. And since I'm really quite OCD when it comes to sticking to the pattern I've established for the blog, I couldn't post about the book without the cover, so here you go. Mantitty in all its glory.

Jacqueline Brighton wakes up in a dumpster, and a tramp stole her handbag, claiming she was clearly dead, so it wasn't like she was going to be needing it. She appears to have lost an entire 24 hours, and has only very hazy memories of the night before her blackout. There is blood on her neck and spaghetti in her hair. Then she runs into a drop dead gorgeous guy, who seems to know her, and offers to buy her breakfast even though she is covered in dumpster debris. In flashes of memory, Jackie then remembers that she and Noah, who the hunky guy introduces himself as, had a very steamy date just before she blacked out. She accuses him of drugging her and dumping her after their date, but he explains that her life as she knows it (as a chubby, ever-dieting museum guide) will never be the same. The tramp was right. Jackie was dead. Now she is a succubus.

Noah explains that he is a fallen angel, and that Jackie probably ran into a vampire who drained her close to death before they hooked up. Apparently succubi are created if a vampire nearly kills a woman, and she then has sex with an angel. Jackie thinks Noah is crazy, but is persuaded to take his business card just in case. Within 24 hours of waking in the dumpster, she has lost 10 dress sizes, gained 2 cup sizes, her formerly mousy hair is a long, luxurious mane of red right out of a shampoo advert, and she desperately craves sex. She nearly assaults her doorman, before calling Noah for help.

He brings the only other succubus in town (who works as a porn star) to help her, and Jackie, who previously led a quiet and lonely life, is shocked to discover that she has to have sex every 2 days or she'll wither away and die. Apart from that, she's practically immortal. Soon Jackie has pissed off her boss who thinks she took time off to have breast implants, promised a non-fallen angel a small favour, which leads to Noah being taken hostage by the queen of the vampires. To save him, Jackie has to go on a quest for a legendary halo, accompanied by her new succubus friend Remy and the charmingly roguish Zane, who she is starting to suspect is the vampire who bit her in the first place. Being a succubus is much more complicated than Jackie was first led to believe.

I'm not going to say that I wouldn't have read Jill Myles' book if I hadn't won it, as she shares a blog with several authors whose books I greatly enjoy, and sooner or later I probably would have been curious enough to order it. I enjoyed it, but was a bit exasperated by just how naive and gullible Jackie is for most of the books. She really does cause a lot of her own problems, and I kept wanting to slap some sense into her. She's not quite TSTL (too stupid to live), but fell for the most obvious ploys I could see coming a mile away, and kept being surprised when they were traps. In a first-person narrative, the protagonist's stupidity is a flaw.

Still, the supporting cast are very enjoyable. Noah and Zane are both very gorgeous in each of their vastly contrasting of each other ways. Remy is a lot of fun, and can't understand why Jackie doesn't just embrace a life of vicarious promiscuity like she has. And while Jackie annoyed me, I did like the book enough to go out and get the sequel.

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