My Review: Bloodfever (Fever series #2): by Karen Marie Moning

***Warning!! This review may contain spoilers from the previous title! Continue with caution, you’ve officially been warned!***

To see my review of book #1 – Darkfever – Click HERE

To see my Fancast/Dreamcast of the series – Click HERE

Total Star Rating: 3.75 Stars

You know when you want to give someone a big highfive?

Right in the face?

With a brick?

And repeat it over and over and over?

This was me to Karen Marie Moning after I’d finished this book…Like seriously, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her yelling: “What the fuck?!?!”

Once again, I was shocked at how utterly absorbed into this series I’d become, but there I was reading this book into the next morning instead of getting a healthy amount of sleep. The Fever series just continues to add more and more mystery and intrigue to make readers literally addicted in wanting to find out what happens next. So many questions, but so few answered right away, but then more and more questions keep popping up and my anxiety can’t take it some of the time. I need to take breaks between these books for my own mental health…you laugh, but I’m actually serious.

This series gets deeper and deeper into the streets of Dublin, Ireland and deeper into whatever plot is going on in order for the Unseelie–the evil fae beings–are concocting in order to take over our world. We’re getting to see a different side of Mac, and her uneasy alliance with mysterious and temperamental bookstore owner, Jericho Barrons, reaches its boiling point at multiple times throughout, but the hunt is still on for that dang ancient and evil book, the Sinsar Dubh, that is the key to either our salvation or extermination…it all depends on who gets their hands on it first!

What It’s About:

So Mac had gone into the Dark Zone, discovered the Lord Master’s hideaway, battled it out with him and Mallucé with Jericho by her side, and the closing scene is her doubling over because that dang book, the Sinsar Dubh, had gotten close enough to have her blackout…

We continue into this next installment where Mac is alive and (not) well, but has a safe place to call her temporary home in Jericho’s bookstore, Barron’s Books and Baubles. That is, until a hoard of those nasty & shapeless Fae monsters called “Shades” somehow break in! Mac almost meets her gruesome end, when low and behold…V’lane, the Seelie Fae Prince, makes a surprise appearance and rescues her. Their….interesting relationships shifts into some new territory–one where maybe he doesn’t try to rape her in the middle of an art museum, but instead maybe they become tense allies, because it’s not like Mac doesn’t have enough of that with her current employer/landlord/co-hunter for Fae artifacts/lust muffin…

The hunt for the powerful and evil book, the Sinsar Dubh, continues with more adventures and tension between Mac and Jericho rise, both regular and sexual, and more players join the game of cat & mouse: we’ve got Dani O’Malley, a young sidh-seer like Mac, who discovers there’s a secret coven of seers who have similar abilities when it comes to dealing with the Fae. We’ve got Rowena, that crazy older lady we’d seen twice in the last book who turns out to be more important than some regular old batshit hag. We’ve also got the Dreamy Eyed Guy who’s shown up enough times to be considered an actual character without knowing his actual name, and we also have Christian Mackeltar, who works at the Ancient Languages Department of Trinity College, and is yet another alpha male that enters Mac’s life that is total eye-candy–with a sexy Scottish accent to boot!

The rest of the plot would reveal some major spoilers, so you’ll have to actually read the book to see what else happens!

What I Liked:

1. Mac is Turning Into a Total Badass! The pink loving, Elle Woods-esque barbie doll is still inside her, but that era has been hidden behind a dark makeover, along with more of an edge to her usually bubbly demeanor. Tainted with the need for revenge on her sister, Mac continues to grow and become sharper along the edges as she gets closer to Jericho, and delves deeper into the many mysteries surrounding her, even some new ones that come to light within this title. However, she is still a young woman out in the world for the first time ever, and starts to realize she might be better off not trusting anyone, not even those she’s supposedly allied with. That part is probably the most anxiety inducing: when Mac is thinking inside her head and speculating about everyone and what their motives possibly are, how can she survive amongst all the dangerous players in this deadly game?
2. There’s More Romance This Time! For a paranormal romance genre series, Darkfever didn’t include much romance, which was disappointing, but also made sense in the sense of setting the scene, plus Mac ain’t no chick that will just let some guy just get it. In this next title, there’s an ember that can quickly escalate into an entire raging storm of fire with the tension building between Mac and Jericho. They don’t trust each other, they keep secrets from each other, and nearly come to blows…but beneath all that lies something sensual and filled with complete unadulterated lust.
3. V’lane (Again)! The Seelie–good guy Fae–Prince continues to make incredibly brief appearances, but they are filled with meaning and importance. V’lane helps Mac out of a dangerous situation early on, and afterwards their relationships shifts a little bit. She still can’t trust him, but he shows her that he is looking out for her well being…so long as it probably serves his own goals and motivations–which we are still not entirely sure about quite yet….more frustrating questions commence!
4. The Worldbuilding Continues! Not a whole lot is actually added, but I’d say the foundation we were given in the previous book was just enhanced even further. The author continues by adding layers over everything to make it still feel so new and exciting, and creatures we’ve only heard about in passing may or may not make their first appearance!

What I Didn’t Like:

1. Left with Even More Questions than Answers…We dive way deeper into the series and a whole lot happens, so much that more and more questions keep popping up, and very few actually get answered…It’s so frustrating!? Was Mallucé really a vampire? Who exactly is the Lord Master? What are everyone’s true intentions? What exactly is Jericho?…there’s plenty more where all of those come from, but that would reveal spoilers, so you get my point…

Conclusion:

This series is quickly becoming an addiction to me, curse my co-worker friend, Erika, who turned my attention onto this series! It’s weird, it’s different, and sounds kind of trashy when I try to explain the series to my other friends, but it’s becoming another one I’m incredibly invested in, both emotionally and financially, as in: I will have no hesitation in throwing some dollar bills someone’s way to keep finding these books and sinking my teeth into them!

The story continues at a slightly slower pace with what feels like some filler in there, most of it is Mac trying to organize her thoughts on everything and figure out what everyone else’s game-plan is exactly. It’s actually making me just as anxious and paranoid, and had started giving me some strange dreams…

These books are going to kill me…especially as I looked and there’s going to be, like 11 books total in this whole series.

Thanks for Reading!

— Nick Goodsell