Wayward Reviews

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An old school paranormal romance, book number ten in the immortals after dark series.

Book Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole comes this scorching tale of a demon outcast poisoned with vampire blood and the vulnerable young witch he vows to protect-even from himself.

Malkom Slaine: tormented by his sordid past and racked by vampiric hungers, he’s pushed to the brink by the green-eyed beauty under his guard.

Carrow Graie: hiding her own sorrows, she lives only for the next party or prank. Until she meets a tortured warrior worth saving.

In order for Malkom and Carrow to survive, he must unleash both the demon and vampire inside him. When Malkom becomes the nightmare his own people feared, will he lose the woman he craves body and soul? 

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Review

* Non-Spoiler Review*

First book in my Autumn TBR ticked off! When I picked Demon in the Dark, I was thinking I wanted a comfort Paranormal Romance (PNR) read – which in a way it was.

What I didn’t expect was that I noticed my preferences had changed in my PNR expectations. But I will get into that shortly…

I have read a lot from Kresley Cole over the years, and thoroughly enjoyed her world building for this series. Taking from myths and legends, there are Werewolves, Vampires, Valkyrie and Demons, plus many more. I always enjoyed who Cole would pair up and how they would get there, bonus points for interlinking characters from previous books.

This book is the original PNR trope, one of the main characters is put in an unexpected situation – they are then saved by the other main character and the usual push and pull ensues. This is why I do like falling back to PNR as a comfort read because there is that predictability in it…they can be a bit of fun mixed with some extra spice.

I have been reading PNR for over 20 years (excuse me while I go have a menty b about that), so I have read a fair amount of PNR and seen it evolve throughout the years.

Therefore I was surprised to find, that this story line…while adventurous and fast paced – felt significantly outdated. There is content in here the should have trigger warnings, and I felt that a lot of areas were rushed, which could have made the story more engaging.

While I do love an Alpha/dominant male character, this one needed some serious therapy – and finding a woman shouldn’t have been the way to heal him. That’s where I started to notice my tastes had changed. When these books first came out I didn’t notice how some plot lines were not realistic or healthy enough to be engaging as they were.

As I waffle on, what I am trying to point out, is that while the story overall was enjoyable – I recognised that this is an old paradigm of PNR tropes that I am not here for. That’s not to say this is for every PNR book historically written, but more I am happy to say that writers have moved away from this type of theme.

Overall, if you don’t mind it being a little out of date, it was a face paced, enjoyable read.

Spice Rating: 5/6 – See my rating system here

Book Rating: 3/5