Review: The Darkest Kiss by Gena Showalter

The Darkest Kiss
(Lords of the Underworld #2)
By: Gena Showalter
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: June 1, 2008
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Rating: I really enjoyed it.

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She has tempted many men…but never found her equal. Until now.
Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death–a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him.

But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining

I read the first book in the series (The Darkest Night) and really liked the story. I was surprised that I felt the same way with this book. Not because Gena Showalter is a bad writer but because normally when you read a series especially romance novels, the first one is always the best and then they loose their appeal. However this book could hold it’s own against the first. You could even read it without having read the first one and you would still be clued in on everything. Now there are some references to the first book but it isn’t anything too major. Right from the get go you are caught up to speed on the back story of the lords of the underworld but not in the way that most books do, where you are skipping pages thinking “where is the story, I already know this!”.

The story starts off with Anya seeking out Lucien at a club and wanting to dance with him. I felt bad for him when he thought that she was just trying to “tease the ugliest man” there, because of his scars, and the fact that all of the other lords thought the same thing. When really she had been following him for a while at that point and had grown really interested in him. After their encounter at the club, Lucien is instructed by the gods to kill Anya or his friends will suffer, so he sets off to kill her. The majority of the book is a game of cat and mouse, of him chasing her, they spar a little bit and then she disappears… literally. Anya and Lucien can “flash”, which means that they can disappear and reappear in another location of their choosing. I should also mention that this book does have some parts on Paris (keeper of promiscuity) and Reyes (keeper of pain). Since after all, the books have to twine together somehow. So I cannot wait to read what happens there. It’s a good thing that the third book just so happens to tell the story of Reyes.

All in all I really enjoyed the book and was glad to see that it was just as good as the first, which is a good thing since I bought the entire series.

During the cat and mouse chase, Anya decided to have a little fun and flashed to a busy street in NYC, a gay strip club in Italy, a zoo in Oklahoma and then back to his home to wait for him to return from her little “trips”. When he does he appears in front of her scowling, Death glowing in his eyes. He had a bleeding cut on his leg and he smelled like shit. She asks him innocently “Step in something?” He responds with “That I did not mind. What I did mind was being hit by a cab, then landing on the lap of a naked man. With and erection, Anya. He had an erection.” – Priceless

Previous reviews from the LOTU series
The Darkest Night