false 2712967 0373773102 9780373773107 1164 102 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255630900m/2712967.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2712967.The_Darkest_Pleasure 48192 Gena Showalter 11871 1323 4 12 true Sat Jun 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 21 19:09:29 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 22 11:25:19 -0700 2008
I very much enjoyed "The Darkest Pleasure" and found the expansion of the storyline pretty fascinating. It's easy to see after reading this one that Showalter and Harlequin have big plans for this series. We finally meet the shadowy leader of the Hunters, and his identity is quite the surprise. We also find another of the artifacts needed on the quest to find Pandora's missing box. We learn a little more history and a little more about the scope of the battles to come. But mostly we learn about Reyes and Danika.

Reyes' past was very difficult. Learning about the history behind his efforts to leash Pain was, well...rather painful (no pun intended). The lengths he was willing to go to in order to spare humans-just wow. All he wants is a respite from Pain, a little peace where he doesn't have to leash his demon. He finds that in Danika, but fears that having Danika will expose her to the taint of his demon, and he's very unwilling to do that. So he can't keep her and he can't let her go either.

Danika always wanted to be normal, but she never was. She can't seem to come to grips with that and I disliked her intensely for almost half the book. But I can say that she redeems herself beautifully and I think these two are a perfect pair.

Neither trusts the other and each of them apparently betrays their loved ones at some point in this book. I really didn't like that. However, haven't we all betrayed someone we love in some way in our lives? I guess that's just part of being fallible and it's nice to know that sometimes our heroes and heroines are fallible too. In all, I think the progression of their relationship was just as it needed to be. Without all the missteps, misunderstandings, and mistakes they would never have gotten to such a strong ending. And the ending of this book is worth missing a few hours of sleep!

Now for my rant. I'm ticked that I have to wait 16 months, yes folks that's November of freaking 2009 for book 4. Books 5 & 6 are scheduled to follow in Feb and May 2010 respectively. Come on already...a year is understandable, but almost a year and a half? Why publish the current releases now? Why not delay their release a couple of months each? I'm actually a tad (!?@#) pissed at Harlequin for this and would be interested to hear their marketing strategy. It would have to be a really good one to risk alienating fans with such a long wait when there are plenty of competitive paranormal series out there without such a long gap between books.
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