Author: Michelle Rowen
ISBN: 9781921796753
RRP: $19.99
Dark Kiss is the first book in the Nightwatchers series, latest series for the talented Michelle Rowen. This is my introduction to Michelle Rowen, and I’m thinking the beginning of a long relationship with her books and these characters.
The moment I saw this book I knew I had to read it. The cover is gorgeous and with Kiss in the title I had a feeling it was going to be right up my alley, and actually in my favourite genre. Dark Kiss had me expecting vampires but I can not say I was disappointed.
Samantha is an ordinary teeenaged girl, child of a broken home, who had a brush with the law for shoplifting as she adjusted to her parents divorce. That brush was enough to scare her straight so to speak and steer her totally away from living dangerously.
She is the quirky outsider at school, never really got far with any of the boys she liked, but has a best friend forever who seems to be her polar opposite. Carly and Sam have been best friends since kindergarten and will always have each others back.
The story begins with the best friends at the local teen hangout Crave, an all ages club with music and dancing. On what seems to be an ordinary Friday night Sam is singled out by the hot older boy she has had a crush on forever, they move upstairs because he needs to talk to her, or so he says….
The boy you’ve been crushing on forever singles you out and offers you a kiss that will change your life forever, what do you do? Personally I think that the vast majority of teen girls are going to do exactly what Sam did and take the kiss, even without knowing the full consequences. Who in that situation is even going to be thinking clearly enough to ask how it’s going to be life changing, what the consequences are going to be? Not me, that’s for sure.
Dark Kiss makes me think vampires but instead I got Angels and Demons and something else… something not definitively named but referred to as ‘grays’. They are not demons but they are turned into grays by a soul sucking demon.
Rowen’s explanation of the soul, its uses and its limitations, is interesting and intriguing. It seems that something is rising in the city of Trinity and it affects the balance of the universe enough that higher beings are required to step in and clean up the mess. A team is sent in to investigate, discover the Source, and eradicate the problem. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? If things were that easy it wouldn’t be enough to write a series so of course things don’t quite run that smoothly.
The team is supposed to be 2 Angels and 2 Demons, with Bishop leading the mission. We get to know Bishop and Kraven, Angel and Demon, reasonably well throughout but you know that there is a lot more simmering under the surface about these two that we will learn throughout the rest of the series. There is definitely a lot more to these two than meets the eye. We don’t learn much about the others, they are very shadowy characters that only make minor appearances after their original scene but this too could change the further we move into the series.
The writing is fluent and the characters are intriguing. There are quite a few interesting little twists that play out and hand feed you little tidbits of information but they serve only to build the intrigue and not answer the questions. Situations that will leave you eagerly anticipating the next book, waiting to discover more about the enigmatic characters you have grown to care about.
I really enjoyed reading this book, I would have liked to sit and devour it in a sitting but alas my lifestyle does not often allow those opportunities.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!