If you missed my review of Rafael, you can find it here.
Anita is back! We are closing in on the wedding!!! But so you know, the wedding doesn’t happen in this book. Ugh. I want to see the over-the-top circus that will be this wedding though I am excited to watch the private ceremony that includes the heart of the poly group too.
We open this book in the best way possible. Edward is getting his tux fitted in front of Anita. A tux that Jean-Claude had the privilege of figuring out how it would look. Unfortunately, two things ruin the experience. 1. Anita’s dad. He is really unhappy his daughter is marrying a vampire. 2. A murder. After the call from her dad, Anita, in a moment of vulnerability, cried, and Edward’s stepson Peter held her. If you know anything about Anita, she has quite the harem of men and women. Peter is most definitely not one of them. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Kane from being an asshole and implying that Anita is a slut. Peter defended her with his fists, which potentially put his life at risk. It may come to Peter, Edward, or Anita needing to kill Kane. The unfortunate part of killing Kane is it could kill Asher (One of Jean-Claude’s loves) because Kane is Asher’s animal to call.
After the call from her dad, Anita received a call from Dolph about a Sunshine murder. The Sunshine Murders is a new string of murders that have been targeting vampires by burning them alive when they are sleeping in hotels. Unfortunately, humans have been killed in this too. One of the murders caused the death of a bunch of humans when the hotel in New York burned down around the vampire in the early morning, and people weren’t fast enough to escape when the fire blazed out of control.
When Anita looks at the murder scene, Dolph’s friend and colleague, Pete McKinnon, passes on information “he isn’t supposed to tell her” and requests that she get ahold of Jean-Claude without using the phone so he won’t get caught. It was a ruse to get her to use her psychic abilities around him with a vampire. He and his higher-ups wanted to test an amulet that witches had made against vampires. Unfortunately, it stripped away all of Anita’s control and Jean-Claude’s. Anita was pissed. I think Dolph wanted to kick the shit out of McKinnon. McKinnon didn’t know the specifics of the charm, he was just blindly using it, and it almost caused Anita to be completely rolled by Jean-Claude.
What McKinnon did do right, however, is warn Anita, Jean-Claude, and Dolph. McKinnon and his superiors believe that hate groups will target Anita and Jean-Claude’s wedding. This Anita and Jean-Claude have already anticipated, but McKinnon says it’s worse. That it isn’t the usual hate groups and that they would start targeting people around Anita and Jean-Claude. According to McKinnon, the chatter says that something will happen this week. So Anita needs to up her security now.
After dealing with the murder scene and McKinnon, Anita returns to the tailor to prepare for her date with Jean-Claude. She manages to get through that and get to Guilty Pleasures for her date. She is supposed to go on stage with Jean-Claude tonight as Nikki. I don’t know how she is going to make it with those shoes on. She can’t even walk. During the performance, they are hit by a psychic attack. Anita, Jean-Claude, and Graham create an illusion to keep the audience safe and occupied while they look for the culprit. They end up needing to hide from the crowd. In comes Richard. Now we know shit has hit the fan and that we need an emotional shovel. They eventually cast him out for the time being.
The vampire calls himself Deimos. With that information, Jake could tell Anita and the rest of the car about the vampire. Apparently, he is the son of Ares, as in the Greek god. He can also shapeshift into a snake that has been extinct for eons. He covets what Jean-Claude has. He wants to possess and use Anita like a weapon, and the same with Richard though Deimos isn’t impressed with Richard’s power level. He wants to rule America as Jean-Claude does.
So, Anita has a wedding rapidly approaching, her family coming into town, all of whom have been mentioned briefly but have never been in the book, a vampire to defeat, and a murder to solve. Oh, and to figure out how to kill Kane before he kills Peter and hope that it doesn’t kill Asher. Pffft. That’s nothing. Riiiiiiiiiight. Thankfully Edward is already in town. I wonder if Bernard Spotted Horse will be called in? I hope that Olaf doesn’t get called in, but I have a feeling that he will show up even if he isn’t called because of the danger to Anita. That would be bad on so many levels, but I am surprised he has stayed away from Anita as well as he has. I genuinely think he loves Anita as much as he is capable of it.
I loved the book. I devoured it in twelve hours. Maybe fourteen. I am dying for the next book. It will be book 30 in the series, which is fitting because this year, Anita turns 30. Check out my article about it. From what Ms. Hamilton has said on her Tik Tok, book thirty is to be titled Slay and is due to be out in November of this year. Do you read Anita Blake? Or anything else by Laurell K. Hamilton? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle!
