Full Transparency: I bought the first three books in this series with a misguided confidence that I'd love them, and then I was severely frustrated by the first book. I wasn't even sure I'd come back to the second one, but eventually I did...and remembered all of my frustrations.

I want to first say that, in my opinion, the 'books' in this series are not complete books. They are, by my best educated guess, what should have been a single or perhaps a couple of books, which the author split into multiple (five, I believe) volumes and labeled a series of books. To my mind, she can only have done this in order to make a larger profit by selling five short books instead of one or two longer ones. I also want to point out that the author clearly knows this. Why do I say this? She proclaims ahead of Book 2's beginning the following: "Each volume is a fully-contained [sic] book with a climax and a conclusion."

All due respect, but how many books do you know that have felt the need to claim, in the beginning, that they are actually books? I actually can't think of any at all, outside of this series.

Length and definition aside, this book leaves a lot to be desired. Minor plot/character holes are an issue, but lack of development is an even more serious issue. If the story had been fully developed, with real care given to psychology, description, and the progression of plot and emotion, then perhaps this could have been a full book. As is, it's so bare bones that what the reader gets sometimes feels more like an outline than a fully developed novel, and while the characters are hitting the high points of a dark romance, those high points are the only thing given time on the page. When you add in repetition, there's not much to admire here beyond the bare-bones outline of what might have had the potential to be a powerful dark romance if given real attention and development.

As it was, not so much.

I may or may or may not read the third volume since it's already on my shelf. I certainly won't be purchasing more of the series, or anything else written by the author, and I wouldn't recommend others do so. ( )