4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Darkness series, book one, February 5, 2009
This review is from: A Perfect Darkness (Mass Market Paperback)
Since a young age Amy Shane has been able to see colors around people and eventually figured out what each color and glow means. At the age of five, she lost her last parent to suicide. It is no wonder that Amy grew up a loner. Now around the age of twenty, Amy still tends to avoid people, except for "Uncle" Cyrus Diamond. Amy works freelance, retrieving data from computers and software. (With a great ninety-five percent success rate!) But even talking to clients on the phone is becoming a problem because the colors and glows are actually starting to come through the phone lines lately. Then a stranger breaks into her bedroom late one night. With only a few sentences he changes her life forever. Amy hardly has time to be afraid before more men break in, claiming to be FBI, and drag the first away. Since Cyrus worked for the government, Amy turns to him. Cyrus confirms the man was a serial killer and she is lucky the FBI reached her in time. Yet for the first time in Amy's life, she does not believe Cyrus is telling the truth. Amy soon learns that the stranger's name is Lucas Vanderwyck and that he has been the man entering her dreams and keeping to the shadows. Amy and Lucas share some sort of psychic connection.
As Amy digs deeper, Cyrus becomes worried. At this rate, Amy would quickly learn the truth about who and what she is. Should that happen, Cyrus will no longer be able to protect her.
***** This is the first in an outstanding new paranormal romance series. This is not a new author with little or no experience. (Jaime Rush is the more widely known as Tina Wainscott.) With this new name, Jaime gives readers more of the suspense they crave. From the very beginning my attention was caught and I will not even pretend that I wanted to get free. I read the entire story in one afternoon, rarely coming up for air. The more I read, the deeper the conspiracy went. Paranormal Romance gets no better than this and I cannot recommend this title highly enough. *****
Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Perfect Darkness, February 23, 2009
This review is from: A Perfect Darkness (Mass Market Paperback)
A Perfect Darkness is the first book in a series about The Offspring. The main character is a computer genius who spends her time in seclusion who does not feel she fits in with the world around her. Amy, the heroine sees auras around people. The story line was interesting but at times I became lost in the history of the story. The author had a tendency to spend a lot of time writing about the past instead of focusing in on the present.
Amy is a computer whiz who retrieves lost data from damaged computers. The auras or glows that Amy sees can sometimes tell her what the person's intentions are. Her gift also can tell her if someone has gifts like herself or not. The only other real impacting event in her life thus far was her father's suicide. These two events have set her apart from the outside world. Making her a recluse.
One night a handsome stranger named Lucas bursts into her apartment and whispers a few words to her. These words turn her world around. He claims that her father did not commit suicide at all. He tells her briefly of a group of people called the Offspring and that she is one of them. The FBI burst into her apartment before Amy can ask her any questions from him and takes Lucas away.
Soon Amy realizes that the man was not a stranger at all. He is her dream lover. Her Uncle tells her that Lucas was dangerous but his explanation leaves Amy suspicious. Her sudden thirst to know more about the Offspring and the memory of the encounter with Lucas lead her to a gallery opening. She was stunned to see her dreams put onto canvas. In her dreams the man's face is shadowed. However, on canvas she sees the face of the man in those dreams is Lucas.
From this point onwards in the book the story focuses on Amy trying to gain the trust of the other Offspring and working with them to find out why the government is trying to capture them. Amy's main goal is to find where Lucas is being held and to rescue him.
The action of the story flows nicely and the story line of the book keeps the reader interested. I found myself getting bogged down in past history that will be more essential as the series progresses. Perhaps this book should have been the second in the series or a prequel needs to be written to this book to give the full history of events rather than spending a significant amount of time filling the reader in on the whys.
The romance or love of the two main characters Amy and Lucas needs more work done to it. Their dream rendezvous seemed to be based more on lust than love. There are very little other activities in these dreams besides passionate sex. Even the conversation in these dreams is limited. This makes the love that Amy believes she feels for Lucas hard to believe. It is noted that Amy and Lucas bonded when they were children. This is only given a brief explanation. No period of time is given or reasoning behind why they bonded. Even still, if they bonded when children, people do grow up and things changed. To be truly love, more effort should be given to knowing the person again rather than just mutual passionate sex.
All in all I found the Offspring theme interesting. But the history of the book weighed down the reader instead of progressing through the book with more action. The romance of the book was poorly thought of and although the scenes were heated it left me wondering how can she love someone she barely knows.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great beginning..., February 12, 2009
This review is from: A Perfect Darkness (Mass Market Paperback)
I loved this book! The mystery of why all of these events were happening in the first place kept me reading to the end. I like that not all of the answers were given here - it builds anticipation for the next book in the series. The characters were so interesting, as very few of them were all good or all bad. I can't wait for the next installment.
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