欧宝娱乐

The only thing saving this from a 1 star rating was the world-building. Moning has created a fascinating new world for her characters to play in. Unfortunately it's those characters that really brought down this novel for me.

MacKayla Lane's life is turned upside down the day she finds out that her sister Alina, who had been studying abroad in Ireland, has been murdered. The police have no leads and her case gets filed away as unsolved. MacKayla can't stomach the thought of her sister's killer getting away so she promptly quits her job, empties her bank account, and flies to Ireland to try to solve the mystery herself.

MacKayla Lane is a vapid, shallow, stupid girl. She leaves her grieving parents behind to try to find out what happened to her sister. She thinks she can do better than the police yet her main thought throughout the novel is what color nail polish she should wear. On top of the nail polish, Mac constantly worries about her appearance; her clothes, hair, and make-up are the only thing she seems to care about. (view spoiler)[Her cover gets blown by a Fae and she bitches and moans about having to cut and dye her hair. Your sister DIED and you are worried about your stupid hair? (hide spoiler)] She says that just because she likes pink and has blond hair it doesn't mean she's Barbie, but she never really seems to act anything but dumb and naive.

She antagonizes the one person that is willing to help her, Jericho Barrons, and continuously hides information from him, thinking she knows best. Her actions around him are ridiculous, and at one point when he brings up her dead sister she yells, "ShutupIhateyou!", and yes, it's printed like that in the book. (view spoiler)[She acts like a petulant teen mad at her parents for grounding her, which in fact Barrons does, and she allows it. That doesn't stop her from leaving when he's gone and going off on her own though, getting into trouble. (hide spoiler)]

Not much better than Mac, Jericho Barrons is a reprehensible character. (view spoiler)[She lets him into her hotel room yet leaves her door open so she has a chance to yell if he tries anything funny. On his way out he crushes MacKayla to himself to show that the open door wouldn't save her and she comes away bruised, unable to wear a bra because the underwire hurts too much. At another point he kicks a coffee table and grabs and pulls her up by her hair, yelling at her for being stupid and going off on her own. And so, she enters into an abusive relationship with this man to the point where she thinks she has to rely on him in order to live. And she unfortunately has to because he's brought her farther into the world to the point of no-return. He uses her for his own purposes, which she is aware of, and yet by the end she looks at him as a savior, someone protecting her and helping her with finding and meting out justice to the one that killed her sister. (hide spoiler)]

Unfortunately on top of the abuse, Barrons has practically no personality. I couldn't get a feel for him as a person and I was only left with a deep dislike of him and his actions. There's nothing good about him to latch onto, aside from the fact that he's supposed to be the ubiquitous "tall, dark, and handsome." I'm dreading reading about him as a love interest because I'm not sure if I can distance this Barrons from any future incarnation I come across. If I had been her I'd probably have thrown in with the Seelie prince that she encounters, at least he displayed some not entirely self-serving motives.

These two characters are really an unfortunate creation in a very unique and interesting world. The only reason I could keep reading was because of the world-building. The Fae are scary and disgusting and I really got a feel for the streets of Dublin that Mac walked up and down, surprisingly not getting killed. I like Moning's ideas and the lore she weaves into the story.

The style that Moning wrote in really pissed me off though. She's telling the story through Mac's eyes, as though it's already happened. So there's parts where Mac will say (I'm paraphrasing), "I would later find out that he was lying but at this point I believed him," or "this was where my life really changed" - she does this throughout the whole book. So we can't even read the book and read the events as the story unfolds, future Mac has to go around spoiling things! I can understand using this in a prologue to set things up but I don't want to know things that the character doesn't even know yet!

And the ending was dumb. (view spoiler)[Mac goes from a cut-off shorts, pink camisole, and strappy sandal wearing 22 year old tan blond bimbo to a fighting machine. With no training! Even Buffy had training. (hide spoiler)]

I already own the second book so I'll continue with this series against my better judgment.

Update: I've also read Bloodfever now, so here's my review.