Dancing With the Devil by Keri Arthur | Rant Review [Spoilers]

Dancing With the Devil by Keri Arthur

Nikki & Michael

First Published: 2008

Paperback

Adult, Fantasy
Rating:

Re-Readability:

Private Investigator Nikki James grew up on the tough streets of Lyndhurst and believes there's nothing left to surprise her. All that changes the night she follows teenager Monica Trevgard into the shadows-and becomes a pawn caught in a war between two very different men. One fills her mind with his madness, the other pushes his way into her life-and her heart. Nikki knows how dangerous love can be, but if she wants to survive, she must place her trust in a man who could easily destroy her.
Michael Kelly has come to Lyndhurst determined to end the war between himself and another brother of the night. For 300 years he has existed in life's shadows, gradually learning to control the life from death cravings of a vampire. Nikki not only breaches his formidable barriers with her psychic abilities, but makes Michael believe he may finally have found a woman strong enough to walk by his side and ease the loneliness in his heart. But will his love be enough to protect her from a madman hell-bent on revenge? Or will it drive her into his enemy's deadly trap?
Only together can they overcome the evil threatening to destroy them both. But the secrets they keep from each other might prove to be the greatest threat of all.

Good God this book was boring.

Seriously, I did not expect this. The "heroes" kept getting into traps, nearly dying, failing and in pain. Rinse and repeat. It got old real quick. Even scenes one would normally classify as action scenes were dull and dry without an ounce of soul.

And let's just take a second to lament how dumb someone has to be to fall into traps over and over and over again. At a certain point, couldn't you try to put a trap of your own? Or do something, anything, to counter attack?? Seriously, it's been 5 years since I read this book and I am still angry about it...

Now, on top of all this, a lot of parts made absolutely no freaking sense. Michael, who is the male protagonist, literally found the whereabouts of villainous-dude Jasper about half a dozen times throughout the book. But then, those scenes ended in fade-to-blacks paired with some inane notion like "it's time for the hunter to become the hunted"... which never played out. The next time we see our "heroes", nothing has changed and Jasper is still at large. Why is this even in the story?

Then, there was the Case of the Vanishing Injuries. These guys... they get hurt. Often. Like, hit by a car kind of hurt. And then... it's mentioned maybe once, and is forgotten until the next time they get injured. That's not how these things work, book!

But at the end of the day, it was the characters that made this book suck ass. More specifically... it was Nikki. I disliked how scared she was, all the time. It's human to be afraid, but having that be your one single emotion is just frustrating. But I could deal with that. I could even kind-of-maybe-sort-of deal with her utter uselessness, even though it's one of my pet peeves in books, especially when the girl is so heavily gifted. Like, you've got everything working for you to be a key character in the story, and instead, you are just a damsel in distress.

But I only started actually hating her later in the story. On the one hand, she did not want Michael to go and on the other she was so darn annoying, refusing to trust him because of something someone else did, being anti-vampires in general, accusing Michael of dumb things and just looking for something wrong about him. And then, when he does leave, she regrets it. Girl, you deserve to have your ass deserted and left to fend for yourself. Yes, you will die within a minute because you are that useless but at this point, I don't even give a fuck.

Now, clearly, considering the former paragraph... I wasn't a huge fan of the romance. It wasn't very believable, at any case. I have no idea why this two fell for each other. I mean, why would anyone fall for Nikki??? And naturally, the "I love you"s came out of nowhere. Because that's the kind of novel this is...

One of the most disappointing things about this novel was actually the writing. I had been excited to read a Keri Arthur novel when I picked this up. I heard a lot about them, after all. Sadly, I was very underwhelmed by it. There was just nothing about it, and as I said before - boring as hell.

Okay, wait, time for a positive thing about this novel!... It ended and I was able to move on to better reads. LOL.