I’ve been a Jeaniene Frost fan for a very long time. I’ve been with her since the early days of Bones and Kat and I’ve been loyal ever since. I love these books, each one of them, and I will defend her till I’m blue in the face.
However, her books make it difficult to forget that they are chic-lit to their very core. All of them have sexy, accented vampires and female main characters who are the very incarnation of the old “cute, but psycho” Happy Bunny stickers. They even come with a “nasty inner voice” and non-stop first person perspective! And if that’s your thing? Goddess bless. I would be the first to say it’s not mine. But the Meg Cabot, Molly Harper, and Jeaniene Frost books of my just last week would easily make me a dirty, rotten liar.
But Shades of Wicked was one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve ever had. Truth to tell, I wasn’t sure what I’d find in here. I stick with her books not out of blind loyalty, but out of a deep love for these characters she’s created and added to with every book. There are some characters I haven’t liked, like Kat and Gretchen, but overall, each romance is different and each couple always manages to impress me, at some point. Even though we’re playing with Vamps and typical chic-lit plots and ploys, there’s always something deep and desperately real about them.
Veritas and Ian have been with us since Kat and Bones, where Ian was more villain than cohort and Veritas had a stick so far up her ass, she had an occasional, mysterious cough. But with each book, there was much, much more to each character until, in the culmination to Frost’s Dracula quartet, we knew Ian and Veritas would be next.
This was absolutely the best book of Frost’s so far. Veritas is funny, non self-doubting, and deeply powerful without constantly trying to figure out new powers, like all four ladies before her. You’d think she wouldn’t be the perfect partner for a man who hosted circus themed orgies, but the Veritas who saves helpless creatures and shyly smiles at Ian, despite being 4,000 years old, is exactly that. You know about 78% of Ian’s story, if you’ve read Bones, Menchares, and Spade’s books and the book acknowledges that, as Veritas knows it too. There’s no push away from the romance because the characters have been doing that already in the other books and that makes the book so refreshing! It’s more friends to lovers, but even that is more like they called off a duel, said, “well met”, and made out. The book is paced well and the cliffhanger is so ruthlessly positive, it doesn’t even feel cruel that it won’t be until January that I’ll get the next installment.
Frost’s books are more about the relationships than erotica. The sex scenes are all designed to be heartfelt interactions between these beautifully crafted characters. And this series drops that core concept on it’s face in three different ways. The first is that these scenes are her hottest yet. Scorched earth. Mrow. The second is that they’re between two characters who have such interesting and emotionally fraught issues with touching, consent, and sex, that they mean more than ever, while also being hotter than ever. Excellently done.
I listened to the audio book for this read, as I have for all of her books. Tavia Gilbert, the woman who reads them, is a goddess. Her voice is probably a little to blame for my dislike of Kat, but you can also tell how much fun she’s having reading it. I think of her more as a voice actress than a reader. Her voice is also perfect and distinct for every single male voice. And each voice is consistent. Her voice for Bones is the same now that it was twelve books ago and it’s been sexy in every book. I’d actually be deeply offended if anyone who wasn’t Tavia Gilbert tried to read these books to me. The woman is an absolute gift.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes paranormal romance, vampires, or chic-lit in general. Can you read it on it’s own? Yes. Should you? That’s a hard question. It was impossible to write this without prefacing it with a nod to the other books in her world. It’s loaded with lots of references, hints, and I think you’ll get 300% more out of it reading the others. But I feel pretty bad telling you to read a new story with about 13 books or more to catch up on first. So i’ll simply leave it up to you!
Sexy Star Standard:
The Resident Romantic 