A Kiss of Shadows
Books | Fiction / Romance / Fantasy
3.8
(1.9K)
Laurell K. Hamilton
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Meet Merry Gentry, paranormal P.I., and enter a thrilling, sensual world as dangerous as it is beautiful, full of earthly pleasures and dazzling magic, and ruled by the all-consuming passions of immortal beings once worshipped as gods . . . or demons. Merry Gentry, princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, working as a private investigator specializing in supernatural crime. But now the queen’s assassin has been dispatched to fetch her—whether she likes it or not. Suddenly Merry finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt’s plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown—and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Laurell K. Hamilton’s A Shiver of Light. Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton and A Kiss of Shadows “One of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field.”—Charlaine Harris “Sexy . . . Merry’s adventures are engaging and keep the reader turning the pages.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Stunning . . . steamy . . . an exciting and original world.”—San Jose Mercury News “I’ve never read a writer with a more fertile imagination.”—Diana Gabaldon
Fantasy
Paranormal
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More Details:
Author
Laurell K. Hamilton
Pages
448
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2001-01-18
ISBN
0345446887 9780345446886
Ratings
Google: 4.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"Love Meredith Gentry and her Sidhe entourage! 😊"
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Aneesah Mahasin
"Is this series worth reading? If so can someone tell me more about the characters? And what supernatural character are involved?
Thanks "
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Victoria Esposito
"That one is the First of Nine books. Mz. Hamilton also has a Necromancer/Vampire series that starts with 'Guilty Pleasures'."
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Misty
"Love this series "
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Milissa Chapman
"3.5 stars<br/>The very ending was suuuper rushed. Didn’t like that much. Any who, I feel like I had a lot of trouble connecting with this book, and sometimes wondered if I was even actually interested, or just reading because I had nothing else to read. Maybe that was the case sometimes, but the book really wasn’t too bad. Although a lot of the characters felt like tissue, used for their purpose then thrown away and forgotten, the plot had something going for it. I also like how Fae Merediths thoughts are, and how what might trouble a human doesn’t really bother her. She’s quite level headed. I like that. I may even read the sequel"
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Jan
"<a href="http://laughinglistener.com/"><br/>The Laughing Listener</a><br/><b>Format:</b> Ebook<br/><i>I actually spent three whole dollars on this. *Shakes head*</i><br/><b>Rating:</b> 1 Star<br/><br/>Wow... What the actual fu*k did I just read? This was a buddy read I did with my best friend and after hearing her awful first-hand accounts (since she started reading it first) and seeing some of the hilarious reviews, I just HAD to read this to see if it was as crazy as it sounded. I signed up for a hilariously awful, twisted paranormal romance and uhhh, well, that's what I got??? Maybe???? We've lovingly nicknamed this "The Trash Fire" and I wish I could just transcribe all our texts about this novel on here because they were amazing, unlike this book.<br/><br/><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/n6KHppJdQNsbe/giphy.gif" width="" height="" alt="BURN"><br/><br/><b>THE REHASH</b><br/><br/>Merry is half fairy, half human. People in the Unseelie court were trying to kill her for some reason, so she ran off to live a normal life in LA three years ago and is now working as a paranormal detective. She works a case that reveals her location to the Unseelie queen (who's her aunt) and gets dragged back to court. The queen reveals that she wants Merry to inherit the Unseelie throne—apparently for no reason at all—despite the fact that the queen is an immortal who will out live Merry by centuries. LOGIC. The only problem is the Queen's son Cel, a completely ******** that has just as much right to the throne as Merry (probably more since he's her son??). In the end, it's a race to see who can make a baby first and continue the bloodline. Whoever makes a baby first will be crowned king or queen.<br/><br/>That is <i>literally</i> the entire plot. Half-human girl lives in LA. Half-human girl gets dragged away to make babies.<br/><br/><b>THE UGLY</b><br/><br/>Oh my god, where do I even start? FIRST OF ALL, this is soooo so so terribly written. I'd say a middle schooler wrote this if the subject matter weren't so incredibly screwed up. The following is my interpretation of her writing style:<br/><br/><blockquote>I live in Los Angeles. There's smog everywhere. I don't know how the fey can stand living here. This isn't where I'm from, but I can't go home because I'd be killed. Jeremy is my boss. We flirt a lot, but don't worry, it's just how fairies are. He dresses in nice clothes. My skirt today is really short. I have to wear high heels to make my legs look longer. Now I'll spend five paragraphs describing the color of my red hair.</blockquote><br/><br/><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/103R2H9RN2QZgc/giphy.gif" width="" height="" alt="dinglehopper"><br/><br/>AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! *Throws book out a window*<br/><br/>Hamilton also spends next to NO time explaining the universe she's created and I was so confused THE ENTIRE TIME. I already had a very basic knowledge of fairies going into this, so I could kinda follow along, but I had so many questions. She uses the word "Sidhe" every other damn sentence, but god forbid we ever get a solid definition of what the hell it means. And does the general populace know about the paranormal stuff going on?? Merry casually references a few government laws that pertain to magic and they even recruit the police to help with certain cases. There's practically a whole chapter about how Hitler tried to recruit the fey to his side of WWII. I mean, the Unseelie court has a damn publicist! Merry even spends the last half of the book running away from an angry mob of journalists. But then they have to glamour themselves all the time when they're out in public? And at one point Merry goes into a description of fey hunters who are people that lurk around the gate of the Unseelie court to try and "catch a glimpse" of them. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!?! Aren't there fey all over the media if so many journalists are after Merry?? Can't humans just open a damn newspaper to "catch a glimpse" of the fairies??? Do normal humans know or not?!?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!<br/><br/>Eh, whatever, it doesn't matter right??? Instead, here are two pages describing how amazing Merry's breasts look in this push-bra! <br/><br/>And for an erotica novel, the sex scenes were INCREDIBLY unsatisfying. There's one confusingly weird scene in the beginning and one lame sex scene at the very end (plus some very awkward tentacle action that I DID NOT sign up for????), but the middle is nothing but heavy flirting and awkward foreplay that never goes anywhere. It would have been fine if the plot weren't filled with gaping holes and could carry the story on its own, but it couldn't. Instead, I found myself annoyingly bored, reading scene after scene of Merry doing mundane things like flying on an airplane and talking to her grandma. I waited ten chapters for Merry's confrontation with the queen. TEN. And the payoff was sooooo not worth it. We wait for the whole book for Merry to get the queen's permission to get freaky with these hunky fey guards AND THEN NOTHING HAPPENS. The last chapter is a ****** rush job that just made me wanna light this book on fire.<br/><br/><img src="http://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/looking-for-my-sex-life.jpg" width="" height="" alt="Where?"><br/><br/>Also, Merry is a narcissistic bitch (#SorryNotSorry) and I really don't understand why everyone in the book fawns over her as much as they do. All the men she speaks to are like OMG, YOU'RE SO HOT. HOW CAN I POSSIBLY RESIST YOU?! And she's all, I KNOW RIGHT?!?! Merry spends the entire book making off-hand comments on the different ways she's better than everyone else. My hair is beautiful, my boobs look great, my eyes are amazing, my clothes are awesome, blah blah blah. I think I was supposed to see her as a strong, independent woman, but to me, she was just annoyingly egotistical. At one point, her boss Jeremy says something like "She really doesn't know how beautiful she is does she?" I LITERALLY laughed out loud. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Are we talking about the same person?!<br/><br/><b>THE GOOD</b><br/><br/>I liked most of the secondary characters that we glimpse in the beginning. Uther is the **** AND DESERVED BETTER. I mean, did Uther ever find a lady friend to fill his lonely nights?? I'M VERY CONCERNED.<br/><br/>Oh, I also liked when it ended.<br/><br/><b>FINAL WORD</b><br/><br/>Nope."
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Loretta Calhoun
"I think, when she starts coming into her powers, and realizes she can turn them inside out and heal with sex. "
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Cuba Duty
"Definitely a hot steamy book definitely for above 18 years"
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Alexis Crayne