Vane Kattalakis is a were-hunter who's been banished from his pack by a father who's been trying to kill him and his brother Fang. After a deadly attack by daimon's, Fang is left in a strange coma and Vane takes him into hiding to take care of him. Shortly after he finds himself in Bride McTierney's shop. He'd already met Bride once and has been intrigued by her ever since. After a brief encounter with her, Vane realizes Bride is his mate, however he decides not to reveal his true form to Bride. Nor does he tell her, at least right away, they are fated to be together. Instead, he leaves her to believe he is human and secretly protects her from his former pack members who wish his mate harm.

Bride can't understand why a man like Vane would be interested in her. But she indulges herself anyway, and allows herself to be swept away by the larger than life man on a motorcycle. But things go terribly awry and Vane is forced to clue Bride in on his true form and the sort of world he comes from. Needless to say, Bride is horrified at first and has a hard time accepting what she's been told. She eventually comes to terms with it and decides she wants to be with Vane anyway. On the side of all this, Vane still has to look after his brother, who refuses to come out of his coma.

Night Play is the fifth in the dark-hunter series, although this book introduces us to the world of the were-hunters. Their were two problems I had with this book. The first is the lack of action, especially on Vane's part. He was very docile and spent most of the book "flashing" back and forth between his brother Fang and Bride in order to make sure both were okay. The other problem I has was with Bride's character in general. Although she was likable, her constant obsession over her weight and how Vane could possibly be attracted to someone like her got rather annoying after a while. In fact, I had hard time understand why Ms. Kenyon created Bride's character they way she did. I realize not every heroine should be a perfect size zero supermodel beauty. But a size eighteen just seems like overkill to me and unnecessary. It leaves the reader to believe the only reason Vane is with Bride is because the fates deemed it so, which is hardly romantic.

Having that said, Night Play is a good one in the dark-hunter series. But it doesn't really hold up against some of the previous ones like, Kiss of the Night, Dance with the Devil or Night Pleasures.

Erin Kern
author of Looking for Trouble