Customer Reviews

A Perfect Darkness

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Jaime Rush starts off her series with an exciting and intriguing book. This book is packed with action, excitement and, of course, romance. From the very beginning you are asking yourself, "what is going on?", just like the protagonist, Amy. Little by little, we learn details about her past, her parents' past, and her strange connection to a group of twenty-somethings with a variety of psychic powers referred to as "the Offspring".

This book could easily make a great movie or tv series.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Kindle formatting is very good. No noticeable issues.

I was fascinated with this first offering in a series about the Offspring, a group of young men and women a shadowy offshoot of the U.S. government stalks, captures, exploits and then disposes of in order to achieve certain international goals. An intense lucid-dreaming relationship drives the passion and narrative strategy of the tale. Having been a lucid dreamer for some years, I found myself anticipating each dream sequence. However, although this novel falls into the genre of paranormal romance, and much of the plot centers on psychic powers, it is the emotional development of the Offspring, especially the sacrifices they make for others, that offers a deeper message: Humans have the ability to develop technological and psychic powers. However, these powers, though alluring, are beneficial or dangerous depending on the quality of light in the heart of the person wielding them.
The way one of the Offspring, Lucas, steals into people's dreams can serve as a metaphor for the way the novelist has the psychic ability to color the reader's own consciousness. Miss Rush certainly tinted this reader's dreams, painting with a palette as luminous as it is dark and making him want more. . .

This book started off slow. As with most first books in a series, the author needs to set everything up and it became a little much at time to take in. Also, there was a lot of back story thrown in that kept slowing the book down but it was necessary to the story. As for the characters I didn't really care for Petra who is Eric's sister. She would just do what Eric said even if she felt different and didn't fight back. She did start to stand up for herself towards the end but by that time I really didn't want to read any more about her. Maybe she will become a stronger character later in the series that I might like but as of now she is at the bottom of my list. Eric is a bit psychotic, aggressive and a total ass but once Amy starts to stand her ground with him you see that he does care even though he tries to hide behind his I don't give a crap attitude. He is probably my favorite character right now. While Lucas is in captivity he can still visit Amy in her dreams. He is a dreamweaver which means he can go into others dreams. He wants her to forget about him and run away but she refuses to leave him and her mission to find him. Their relationship is sad and sweet at the same time. Over all I did enjoy the book. Once the action starts the reading goes by fast and I finished the book wanting to know more.

I am an avid reader, and love books about the supernatural/paranormal. This is the 1st book in the "Offspring" series, as the author calls them. I will definitely pick up the second book when it comes out next month.

This is the debut book in a series by Jaime Rush about a group of young adults who have psychic powers and are being hunted by a group. The focus of this story is on Amy Shane, a young woman who lives a relatively quiet life until a man breaks into her house and tells her she is a specially gifted person, then gets shot and dragged away. That man, Lucas Vanderwyck, has been in Amy's dreams for months, and her curiosity means that she begins to investigate some of his wild claims. This starts in motion a new life for her, that of running from the CIA and being unable to trust anyone. She makes a reluctant alliance with two other Offspring but feels a link with Lucas and wants to rescue him. But Lucas is being held prisoner and being used for his psychic powers, plus he doesn't want them to rescue him - what can Amy do?

Although aspects of this book were enjoyable, overall I found it a little slow. The central love story between Lucas and Amy was awkward as it was almost entirely carried out in dreams. It was difficult to fully believe that Amy loved Lucas so much when she'd only met him once for two minutes or so. The complex characters of Petra and Eric were interesting but I found some of their rescue attempts a bit unlikely. There were some disjointed parts of the story, such as Amy's wish to rescue her parrot (which didn't take place in this story) which made it feel rather unfinished. In fact the story was unfinished; it's clearly the first of a series but this reader felt that not enough was completed in this instalment to make it feel satisfying.

Parts of the plotting and underlying situation were well written and enjoyable but there were too many loose ends and too little going on in the middle to make this a really good read. The quote from Janet Evanovich on the cover seemed to be rather overstating the merit of this book, unfortunately; it was 'paranormal' but I didn't feel it was 'exciting' or 'sexy', and it hasn't 'hooked' me.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2009

I freely admit that I picked up "A Perfect Darkness" mostly because of the way cool cover. Once I began reading though, it didn't take long for author Jamie Rush to envelope me in her tale of modern urban fantasy with a strong bent toward romance.

Amy is a computer nerd (or is that nerdette? nerdess?) who spends her time retreiving lost files from damaged computer drives for her business "Disc Angel". She savors her nights when she dreams of a handsome lover whose face is always hidden. Amy has always had the ability to discern intent from what she calls the 'glow' that surrounds other people. Her life changes the night a man breaks into her apartment, warns her that her life is in danger, and is then shot by three other men who break down her down and cart him off. They try to tell her they're with the FBI and that they just saved her from a serial killer...but Amy can't quite believe that. So she ventures out from her apartment to hunt down the truth for herself; who was the man who broke in; why choose her; who are the Offspring; and why did the time spent with her 'serial killer' feel more right than wrong?

A strong and neatly plotted tale from new author Jamie Rush. "A Perfect Darkness" has suspense, hot sex, action, mystery, conspiracy, romance, paranormal hints, good guys, bad guys, an insane asylum, the FBI, and hints of other shadowy organizations. How could I pass that up?

Especially for a debut novel, I was impressed with the weave of the plot, the pace of the action, and the flow of the story. The heat level is NC-17 at the least and even the sex scenes were well-written and well placed. Sure there were a couple of weak spots for me, but I enjoyed this story enough to make me put her next book, "Out of the Darkness", on my to-buy list for September 2009.

This book was very good. It was action packed and the romance was beautiful. The supporting characters were very well thought out and it was easy to care about them. There will definitely be a series if there isnt already and i cant wait to get my hands on them.