Tina's Reading Books

This second book in the Kyndred series focuses on Rowan.

We were introduced to Rowan in the previous book Shadowlight. Her special Kyndred ability allows her, at just a touch, to reach into someone's mind and find the vision of that person's true love -- past, present or future -- and then morph into that person. The upside to this ability is, holy cow she can shape shift. The downside is when she is with a guy she runs the risk of turning into someone else because the guy is fantasizing about the gal he really wants, not her. So, yeah, bummer.

Of course, you know the punchline to this joke. Once she touches a guy and doesn't turn into someone else then she is that guy's true love and thus he is the man for her.

In this book Rowan meets two potential true loves. One is the sexy French chef Jean-Marc Dasant. The other is the sexy, yet surly, PI Seam Meriden. One of the fun mysteries of the book is waiting to see which one she picks. A second mystery is who exactly is the missing girl PI Sean is looking for and how does she connect to Rowan?

But outside of Rowan's love triangle/missing persons plot there is a lot more going on in the book that progresses the series arc of the the people hunting the Kyndred. And by 'progresses' I mean gets crazier and more complicated. A new power player is introduced and then quickly removed. There are more shifting alliances than I can keep up with. And while Gennaro was set up as the Big Bad in the last book with his ginormous fortune and his ginormous genetics company this book has introduced some cracks in his armor. For one thing his employees are all plotting and counter plotting. You don't know who is really good or bad and it is kind of funny to watch and fun to speculate.

There is also an intriguing mystery that connects sexy chef Dansant and Michael Cyprien, thought neither one of them knows the other. Alexandra ran into the chef briefly thinking he was Michael. Their uncanny resemblance has Alex's Spidey senses tingling but she doesn't know who the stranger with her husband's face is and doesn't know how to find him. These near misses between our familiar Darkyn friends and these new Kyndred are killing me!

I liked this book more than the first one because I thought it balanced the action/Kyndred/Darkyn long arc plot much better with the focus on the central character and romance than the previous book did.

Not a book for a newbie to the Darkyn world, imo, but a great installment for long-time fans.