Blood Magic and Any Given Doomsday

Just finished reading Blood Magic by Jennifer Lyon and Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland.  Both are paranormal romance and both are the beginning to a new series and addictive.  But lets take them one at a time.

Jennifer Lyon

Blood Magic's biggest success is the characters.  I don't know how Jennifer Lyon does it, but they were real, thought out and honest.  I felt everything they felt and completely understood the dumb decisions they made - even if I thought they were dumb decisions.  I trusted the characters more than they trusted each other at some points and felt their pain as my own.  The downside of the book was the world she created, it felt to contrived.  It was confusing to say the least.  While I enjoyed the world she created I did find myself having to read sections of the book again and also feeling like I should be taking notes.  I don't think I will have to do as much for the next books she writes - as this is the first book in this world and there is a lot of information.  I feel she could have taken a couple points out and it still would have been a successful world.  I will definitely continue to read her books (if I can get my hands on them) - if just for the characters alone that are the best!  I would give this 3 out of 5 Hunks :-)

Lori Handeland

Oddly Any Given Dooms Day's strength lies in the world that Lori Handeland created for this new series.  She has another series called the Nightcreature Novels - which is fantastic.  The worlds she creates are amazing and believable (well as believable as paranormal can be) but her characters fall below the line I internally set for her.  Not by much mind you - but a little. I find that her books are a little short on pages sometimes, and it would be nice if there was just a bit more character creation in them, then everything would be perfect.  I wouldn't want like 20 more pages - but maybe like 6 or 10.  Just giving it that extra bit of attachment I get to some characters.  Maybe adding more pages wouldn't help me, but I would like to think it would. I would give her 3 out of 5 Hunks.  Her world is fantastic and I look forward to her other books where I hope the characters progress.

Some might say I have high expectations - well my husband says that to me often - but I have never felt like high expectations are a bad thing.  When ever my husband tells me I have too high expectations, I tend to remind him that I had high expectations for a husband as well and he manages to live up to that....so really my expectations are reachable.

Hope whoever is reading this out there gets interested in these two lovely authors.

Hopefully my next book will be "normal" as I feel sort of guilty that I read two of my paranormal books in a very short time - considering there is a limited supply of them in Hong Kong and I usually have to buy them when I am in the UK or the US or online....crap.