THE DARKEST KISS

Author: Gena Showalter ISBN: 9780373772322 6/2008 PARANORMAL Publisher: HQN

SHE HAS TEMPTED MANY MEN... BUT NEVER FOUND HER EQUAL. UNTIL NOW. Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death—a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him. But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining....

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

OMG! I am utterly, completely, totally in love with this series already, and this is the first book that I have ever read by Gena Showalter! I am gonna use a word that is going to get me laughed at by my fellow reviewers, and say that this book is phenomenal!

Anya is our heroine and she is absolutely the best of both worlds. She is very much a menace to society when she wants to be, but she can also be the epitome of a damsel in distress if need be—it depends on her mood and who she is trying to have rescue her. She is flighty but brilliant, and absolutely hilarious! The things that she says to Lucien and the other warriors literally had me in stitches. She's a spitfire for sure, and she sees the man that she wants and has been waiting for just the right moment to ferret him out. When she finally decides that the time is right, she goes in with both guns blazing, ready to snag her a man/demon/Lord of the Underworld.

When Anya first steps foot into the club where Lucien is sitting, he has every intention of ignoring the instant attraction that flares between them the minute he sets eyes on the ravishing beauty. It appears that everyone else in the club has noticed her as well, and that does not set well with him. From page one he feels possessive of her and does not understand it all all. When it appears that this beautiful, powerful supernatural being only has eyes for him, he is sure there must be some mistake. He is scarred and mean and worst of all, he shares his body with the demon of Death. It is his job to escort souls to Heaven or Hell when they die. He is everything that is bad in this world and he knows he is not worthy of her. But Anya is going to have her way and she is absolutely not going down without a fight, and what begins as a simple seduction, turns into something so much more when Lucien is ordered by the god Cronus to take Anya's soul.

THE DARKEST KISS is everything that I love in a paranormal book. It is dark and passionate, filled with lusty, sexy characters that know how to get a job done. Together, this team of warriors are the ultimate bad boys. Having killed Pandora and stolen Pandora's box, the demons that resided there escaped and took up sanctuary in these men. It also helps that they are all hot to trot and tough as nails!

With all the paranormal stories being written nowadays, it is almost easy to get tired of the genre after a while. But when an author like Gena Showalter steps up to the plate and delivers such perfection, she reminds me why I love paranormals to begin with! This series is absolutely my new fave and I know that paranormal lovers everywhere are going to fall in love with the Lords of the Underworld!

Kristal Gorman