Review: Mind Game

Title: Mind Game
Author: Christine Feehan
Page Count: 358 pages
Publisher: Jove
Genre: paranormal romance, romantic suspense
Copy for review compliments of the public library

50 words or less: The Ghostwalkers are taking it upon themselves to track down the girls that Peter Whitney experimented on and then released out into the world. First up is Dahlia White; her powers are amazing but costly, and Nicolas Trevayne is determined to find her and keep her safe.

*Warning: May contain spoilers for the first book in the series. Ye be warned.*

Mind Game's premise was pretty thoroughly laid out in the last few chapters of the first book, Shadow Game- Peter Whitney, in his depravity, began his experiments on girls he adopted from foreign orphanages, only to abandon them when it became clear that children were too hard to mold and that adults would be better suited to the kinds of experiments he wanted to do. Lily, the heroine from the first book, is one of these orphans; consequently she feels tremendously responsible for the rest of the girls and is determined to find them and bring them into the fold.

Nicolas Trevayne (Nico) volunteers to go out and find Dahlia, since her training videos indicate that she's not only tremendously powerful, but that her abilities have a tremendous physical cost as well that could leave her vulnerable if anyone ever decided to betray her.

Just as Nico arrives at Dahlia's place (an asylum in the Louisiana bayou) it becomes apparent that someone did in fact betray her; the rest of the book is about their flight from their violent pursuers, their quest to find out who they (and the other Ghostwalkers for that matter) can trust, and, of course, to have plenty of intimate time as well.

Mind Game is more organized than Shadow Game, with more equality between the characters and more development in terms of the overall story. There's tension between the hero and heroine that's believable and interesting, and these two scorch the words right off the pages.

The formula for these novels is pretty clear at this point, although the addition of other enhanced characters (Jesse from the asylum for example) expands the possibility for future couples in future books.

Speaking of future books, one element that I hope doesn't get repeated in future books is the dreaded Info Dump. The first chapters of this book had one of, frankly, the most boring info dumps I've come across recently. I totally understand that authors do a lot of research to support the world building and make the story more believable and have more depth, but honestly I didn't need to read pages and pages about manipulating energy or gravitational fields or whatever the characters were going on and on about. I feel like there's a time and a place or background information and that the beginning of a book when you're trying to make people feel invested in the story is probably not the time to get bogged down in details.

This book gets a Scandalous Books designation as the descriptions of Dahlia's training and treatment at the hands of the scientists might be disturbing to some people, and of course, there's plenty of intimate scenes between the main characters as well (but nothing off the beaten path or exceptionally graphic if you're already familiar with the genre and the author's writing style.)

Anyway, Mind Game was a fun story with a good couple and a satisfying happily-ever-after. I definitely recommend reading the series in order, so start with Shadow Game and go from there for sure.

Overall Grade: B-