Title: Winterblaze
Author: Kristen Callihan
Page Count: 400 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Genre: historical paranormal romance
Copy for review was purchased by me
Back Cover Summary:
Once blissfully in love . . .
Poppy Lane is keeping secrets. Her powerful gift has earned her membership in the Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals, but she must keep both her ability and her alliance with the Society from her husband, Winston. Yet when Winston is brutally attacked by a werewolf, Poppy’s secrets are revealed, leaving Winston’s trust in her as broken as his body. Now Poppy will do anything to win back his affections . . .
Their relationship is now put to the ultimate test.
Winston Lane soon regains his physical strength but his face and heart still bear the scars of the vicious attack. Drawn into the darkest depths of London, Winston must fight an evil demon that wants to take away the last hope of reconciliation with his wife. As a former police inspector, Winston has intelligence and logic on his side. But it will take the strength of Poppy’s love for him to defeat the forces that threaten to tear them apart.
****
This is truly a series of excellence. In the span of three books Kristen Callihan has become an auto-buy author for me- I will follow her wherever she goes storywise at this point. With that said, in the interest of not spoiling the awesome reading experience for anyone, there are probably spoilers in this review for previous books in the series. Ye be warned and all that jazz.
Poppy Lane is a bad, bad girl. She went from having a great marriage with her detective husband Winson and a million skeletons in her closet to having all her dirty secrets out in the open and a husband who (she thinks) can’t stand the sight of her. She bears so much responsiblity and can’t set it down, even now when her life has gone to crappy crap crap.
Winston is recovering from a life-threatening attack and the added bonus feature of finding out his wife is keeping about a million secrets from him. He has a top-shelf mantrum and starts trying to figure out what to do with all this new knowledge he has, all while ignoring Poppy. Things come to a head when they’re both on the same ship; Lord knows close quarters with no relief in sight is awesome when you’re trying to avoid someone.
I have to say, the beginning of the book took a little while to get going. I would have been totally happy had the whole book been nothing but me reading along as Poppy and Winston dealt with their issues, but I wasn’t surprised at all when there was a supernatural bad guy that had to be defeated. At about 8% the plot kind of gets the Heimlich and we find out that there’s a super bad demon on the loose that Poppy has fought and temporarily defeated before; we don’t know how much of an influence this demon has had Poppy and Winston’s past.
I loved Poppy and Winston as a couple, and I loved watching them find their way back to each other. If I have a complaint about this book, it’s that we had to deal with all of their backstory all at once- the issues that came up in this book were never mentioned before and there were times that it felt like they had to be developed so there would be a conflict besides ‘you lied to me, no I didn’t you never asked the right questions.’ I’m super excited to find out about Poppy and Winston’s baby as well as to watch Mary whip Jack Talent into shape in the next book.
Yes, NEXT BOOK! I thought for sure this was supposed to be a trilogy, but I am wrong about that- there is going to be at least one more book in the series! Shadowdance is due out in November 2013, according to Goodreads, and I will definitely be reading it. Hooray for good news!
As a parting thought, I’m giving this book a full rating of 5, even though there were a couple of pacing issues I wasn’t expecting. I was so pleased with the ending, the incorporation of elements for future stories, and just, oh, everything that I was able to overcome my stumbles very quickly.
A Favorite Quote:
“If you die on me, Winston Lane, I shall kill you.”
His lips tilted. “Don’t worry, sweeting. I live to thwart you.” Then his eyes slid closed.