Review: Darkfever (Fever, #1) by Karen Marie Moning

Title: DarkFever
Author: Karen Marie Moning
Series: Fever
Book #: 1
Pages: 309
Reading Level: Adult
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 4.18
Published: Oct. 31st, 2006

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands…

Taschima's POV:

People kept telling me to pick up this book. Holy cow I should learn to listen. I've been in a book slump this past month and this baby sprang me right out of it! This was a great first book. Intriguing enough to leave you wanting more. I bought the second book, Bloodfever, seconds after finishing Darkfever. Didn't even need to think about it too much, the $7 in my mind seemed well worth it.

Darkfever is this great introduction into the dangerously bad ass world of MacKayla Lane and the Fae. MacKayla Lane is your average spoiled girl. She is blonde, pretty, without a care in the world. She likes to spend her summers outside, sunbathing and swimming in lakes. Reminds me a bit of how Sookie Stackhouse was at first, only younger and way more naive. That is until her sister, Laina, gets killed hundreds of miles away from home (Georgia). Mac decides then to go to Ireland and find her sister's killer, having no idea that stepping foot in that place would seal her fate forever.

I really liked everything about this book. I liked MacKayla, she was just so sunny and happy. But I like her way more as the novel progresses and her brain starts to awaken. She becomes more clever and less Naive. Once in Ireland Mac meets the most interesting set of characters. Let's just start with the most intriguing one, Barron. I am still on the fence about him  being "good" (I mean yeah he is good but at the same time he could be more of a gentleman, jeez... or so my mind keeps insisting while another part of me is like "ravish me now!") but no one can deny he is just incredibly sexy and overwhelming... even just on paper. Full of mystery and a complete ASS. That is not the part that attracts me about him, other than his sheer presence you can tell that he is the type of guy that will keep a promise. Plus those flashes into his warm side are so much more precious... Off track! I can keep talking about Barron all day long but there are more characters than just him and Mac. There are also a football team of bad guys, plus a few sprinkled good guys in the mix. But in Darkfever Mac and Barron are pretty much it. You either love these two or don't love the series at all.

Low on the romance, but I am hoping this will change sometime soon.

Also the Fae in this book? Oh, trust me you are not prepared for them. They are less True Blood more unnaturally scary monster under your bed who wants to eat you whole with its 6 mouths. They are scary, and they are out for blood. I was actually a little unsettled by them. I have come to expect the Fae being tricky sure but not looking and being truly evil. All expectations now? Out the window.

The whole book is a race. Everybody is looking for something super extremely powerful and the first one to get his/her hands on it wins. The world. Yeah, it's that powerful. So Mac and Barron team up to find this super powerful team and together they must defeat every single person that gets in their way. I am selling the book short, trust me it's so good. At first it was a little slow when she gets to Ireland, true, going to grief and all, but after Mac starts uncovering who she truly is (which happens fairly quickly) the plot starts picking up speed.

WARNING: It has some adult content, very adult content. Cussing, sex, nakedness in the middle of public places... Yeah. You have been warned.