Kissing Sin (Riley Jensen, Guardian, Book 2) [Mass Market Paperback]

Keri Arthur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2007

From Melbourne’s gleaming skyscrapers to its throbbing nightclubs, Riley Jenson’s world is raging with danger and desire. A drop-dead-gorgeous werewolf–with a touch of vamp coursing in her blood–Riley works for an organization created to police the supernatural races. But when she wakes up naked and bruised in a barren alley, she knows only that she must run for her life.

Within moments Riley collides with the sexiest man she’s ever seen: steely, seductive Kade, who is fighting a life-and-death battle of his own. With old lovers and enemies gathering around her, Riley knows she is being pursued by a new kind of criminal. Because in Riley’s blood is a secret that could create the ultimate warrior–if only she can survive her own dangerous desires….

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Vampire-werewolf heroine Riley Jensen escapes an unknown enemy's breeding pens to kick off the second installment of Arthur's urban fantasy series (following Full Moon Rising). The action and sex come fast and furious as Riley works with her twin brother, her boss at Melbourne's Directorate of Other Races, as well as most of her lovers (who include a vampire with werewolf issues, a werewolf with mixed loyalties, an alpha werewolf and a horse-shifter) to uncover and derail a nefarious plot to create an army of super-beings. Strong world-building, vivid personalities and the distinctive cultures of each of the various paranormal strains combine for a rich narrative, and Arthur's descriptive prose adds texture and menace. She also creates strong empathy for Riley, whose vampire half is beginning to assert itself, making her already precarious fertility problems worse. As in her first entry, though, Arthur can occasionally lose her reader amid complicated paranormal plot points, and her publisher's insistence on marketing her as paranormal romance may frustrate; though the heroine's multiple sexual partners fit her werewolf nature, they do not fit romance genre conventions and are better suited to readers of erotica/romance hybrids. (Feb.)
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Review

“The action and sex come fast and furious.... Strong world-building, vivid personalities and the distinctive cultures of each of the various paranormal strains combine for a rich narrative, and Arthur's descriptive prose adds texture and menace.”—Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Dell (January 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055358846X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553588460
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Romance > Vampires

More About the Author

Keri Arthur has been nominated in the Best Contemporary Paranormal category of the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Awards, and recently won RT's Career Achievement Award for Urban Fantasy. She lives with her daughter in Melbourne, Australia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Aargh! Frustrating!, March 2, 2007

By 

J. Bergin (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kissing Sin (Riley Jensen, Guardian, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

I liked Full Moon Rising (the first book in the series) quite a bit and snatched this one up as soon as it came out. I cruised happily along until about the last 1/4, I guess, when I just skidded to an abrupt halt. Quinn annoys me. His whining and angsting annoys me. (Is he really Richard Zeeman in disguise? I have to wonder.....) Riley annoys me for putting up with it. And as with some of the other reviewers, Riley's rampant sexuality is a bit of a turn-off for me. I'm all for a hot book, and I understand that because she's a wolf, she's sexual. I get it. And I also get that because her character is a wolf (and therefore NOT human), she's not constrained by a human code of sexual morals. But there's a bit of a squick factor for me when I read about her casual sex in the clubs, and her sex with her mates, and her sex with Quinn, and her sex with the new horse-shifter in town, and her sex with the enemy so that she can get information.... Enough already. The cloning plotline is intriguing and I'm definitely curious about the identity of the mole, but I'm bored with Riley's nymphomania. Thank goodness the sex scenes are short enough to allow a larger story to develop. I just wish I weren't so put off by Riley's sexcapades, because I find myself really struggling to stay interested in the series.

2.5 stars from me, but I'll round it up based on my affection for Full Moon Rising, the first book in this series.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Late to the Party but Darn Glad to be There..., March 5, 2007

By 

C. Farley "seafaire" (Bakersfield, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kissing Sin (Riley Jensen, Guardian, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

Although many reviews have already been written on this novel, I'm not sure we are giving the book as much credit as it deserves. Yes, it's another sexy paranormal, but the adventure component really leaves me breathless. The fights are well-staged and assaults led on enemy compounds with small groups of--er--good werewolves, vampires, shape shifters, etc are NOT predictable. There is an element of surprise/danger to the leads that is not always present in the more typical books. Also going beyond the sensuality part of this genre is always a welcome change. Yeah, everybody is as busy as little bunnies--including the bunnies--but the relationship between bunny-business, adventure and character is more balanced. My only "complaint" is the name of the Australian towns take a little getting used to--I keep thinking the characters are on another planet!.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Murder and Mayhem Bookclub review, May 16, 2007

By 

A. J Thompson "voyagersaus" (Western Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kissing Sin (Riley Jensen, Guardian, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

It's always hard for a werewolf to back away from a fight. Riley Jenson isn't just your garden variety werewolf either; the vampire part of her is asserting itself more as she ages. It is already too late for her twin brother Rhoan to reproduce. Rhoan's vampire characteristics have always been more evident than her own, and he is now as infertile as those in the ranks of the undead. Hoping it is not too late for herself, Riley has been making some discreet inquiries into fulfilling her own private fantasy, that of having a child.

Working for the Directorate of Other Races, Riley fears for her twin Rhoan every time he is called out to run interference between the "beasts" and humans. Rhoan is a Guardian, able to walk the streets in the daylight hours, doing his part to keep the uneasy peace of beings that are only loosely governed by the same rules as the rest of the citizens of Melbourne. When one night Riley wakes up to a scene of horror in a dark alley, she isn't sure whether she was running away for her life or trying to get back into the compound behind her. With scant memory of the last few weeks Riley is afraid, and for more reasons other than the fact that she is naked and covered in someone else's blood. Her strength and unusual qualities have not gone unnoticed by those who have previously wanted to mess with her genetically. Escaping the compound with the assistance of a gorgeous male shape-shifter named Kade, Riley runs back into the arms of those know her best: her brother, her boss and her ex-lover, the gorgeous and enigmatic vampire Quinn. They all agree; whoever is trying to create a super-race of paranormal beings is not doing it for any higher purpose. The clones that have attacked them in the past were not perfect, and they all had deadly intent.

Australian author Keri Arthur has written an atmospheric book of the night world, populated with wraiths, shape-shifters and bloodsuckers, all at war with each other and with their own unnatural agendas. As with the first book in the series (FULL MOON RISING (2006), the "rules" of this fantasy world are largely her own, whilst observing inviolate agreements about vampires frying in the sun and such like. It's refreshing that Arthur has created a character that isn't constantly beating herself up over what she is and moralizing about the depravities of her kind; Riley Jenson gets on with her life and does not apologize for whatever means and methods have been required. Tagging these novels as "paranormal romances" puts too rosy a light on them as there isn't a scrap of romance to be seen to detract from the seething sense of hidden menace. Good attention to detail with the hand to paw (or claw, or fangs) fight scenes rackets up the action component in the read.

As with all novels in this booming genre of urban fantasy, KISSING SIN is another of those guilty little pleasures. A bit of sauce is good, sauce is all part of the fictional vampire and werewolf scene, but the amount of gratuitous sex indulged in by Riley Jenson here is very off-putting. Not for its content, graphic or otherwise but more for its frequency and irrelevance. Another trap; too many hot and willing male characters popping up all over the place with whom Riley supposedly has a true connection. Less is going to more here, as with the reader's attention being dragged about all over the place (too many future plot threads perhaps); the emphasis is taken away from the developing storyline. All the ingredients for success are here and were laid out well with the first novel of the series, but the freer hand given with KISSING SIN detracts greatly from the read.