Blood Cross

Jane Yellowrock is like that girlfriend you have that is totally great in every aspect of her life except men. She is totally badass and I love the skinwalking aspect of her with Beast. It is a really cool concept and her being Native American really fits in with the mystery and history to her character but she is totally clueless when it comes to men.

*** For a gal who had been out of circulation for a few years, I was getting a lot of attention. Too bad they were cop, blood-servant, and angry vamp. Id be lucky to survive. ***

Normally this would be a dealbreaker for me. But I like just about everything else about Jane that Im going to let it go for nowbut well will discuss it later in the review. Jane is still in New Orleans hunting the rogue vampire that seems to making young vampires with no training. Leo in the throws of a vampire depression of sorts wants to kill her and her witchy woman friend has come to visit with the kids. Jane has her hands full at the moment.

Lets just say that I totally love Molly and the cutest little witch ever Angelina. I hope we get a lot more of them in the next books too. I do like that Jane has something resembling a family in them.

The plot is pretty good. Jane needs to find the feral vamps and who is making them. She is also trying to figure out who is stealing witch children and why. Anytime there are kids involved the story gets a bit more intense for me. I liked meeting some more quirky characters, specifically Bethany who seems just on this side of sanity. There was also a really cool revelation about the origins of the vampires and why they are cursed. This was a pretty good ride and it seems like Jane is finding all kinds of new friends to work with in New Orleans. I liked how the search wrapped up as the fight was really intense.

Now back to the abysmal men in Janes life.

So far our options are Leo He is totally out for me because he has tried to kill her a few times. Seriously how is he even in contention?

Then we get Bruiser (George) who is Leos blood servant so basically he is always going to take Leos side over Janes and isnt going to be there when she really needs him. But at least they have some decent chemistry and he seems like a semi-solid dude.

And then we get The Joe a.k.a. Rick. I hate him and Im going to jump on the burn him with fire train. He is a liar, manipulator and a player. We learned that in the last book, she actually saw him having sex with someone else that he was just using for information while he was actively trying to get her into bed. NOjust NO.

The only guy in this that I found remotely jumpable was Derek an ex-marine that is probably too old for her that helped her in the Vampire Hunt. He is the only good guy in this so far.

So Jane needs to gets some dating/picking a mate skills but her ability to kick some vamp ass is pretty solid so I will stick around, probably longer than some of the dudes in this.

Ok so I was really disappointed in this book because of the “Leo-trying-to-kill-her” plot. I mean to me this is a dealbreaker and I would like her to view him as 100% an enemy. But there is some flakiness in here where there is enough doubt as to if he MIGHT be a good guy or not? So hard to tell. She spends most of the book avoiding him and he tries to kill her multiple times! The author needs to make up her mind–either they are enemies or not–I would prefer that they stick to the “enemies” plot since I think they are way too gone with all the murder attempts to ever be friends (or more) again.

I liked the action with Decker and the Marines. Those were the best parts of this book. All the vampire stuff just confuses everything in this book in my opinion. She insists on putting herself in the path of LOADS of vampires (like insisting on going to their party), and guess what? She gets attacked! Shocker! Straddling the fence here between attempting to make some of the vamps to be good guys just is not working for me. She needs to just leave them alone and hunt the rogues. Also leave Bruiser alone! My gosh he is so tied into the camp world how are we even considering him a romantic match??? And the Player? Really?? Ugh. I need a male romantic lead character that I can really get behind and cheer for. Right now I am cheering AGAINST all these guys and that is distracting me from the story. I will move on to book #3, but I am wary….

Not as good as the first in this series for sure, but still decent.

The things Unlike about this series: a well developed world with continuing world building; a large cast of characters that are multi dimensional, the solve a mystery piece to each book with a larger arc across books regarding Jane’s lost years; and I like that these camps are different from camps in !its other stories.

Things I don’t like: Jane needs constant rescuing from her dumb decisions –how has she succeeded in life at all? Serioisuly, book 2 is a series of poor decisions she makes and then whines about. The romance-booooooring. I don’t like Rick or Bruiser/George; she falls into bed with Rick at the end and it seems to be because it’s convenient. shocking since she dithered so long over it, you’d think it would be because she actually cared about him romantically. But no, she cares about him but she doesn’t care about him. Her interest in George feels shallow, too. She mentions repeatedly how she shouldn’t do anything with either of them, but with George it’s because his loyalty would never be with her–he proves this repeatedly in the novel and then looks at astonishingly with worry/guilt. She wants a strong, emotional connection but knows it won’t work with him so she settles on Rick. Realistic, yes, but good reading? No. In the end, both men bite me and that does not bode well for the series unless Leo takes center stage. There are a host of issues with him but they could be worked through…
Finally, I find the series both slow moving and wordy. It is heavy on descriptions that don’t add much and I put the mystery together way before Jane does. This certainly makes it harder to maintain interest while reading.

The twists and turns in this book are too many to even count. I stayed up 48 hours reading this book as fast as I could. Jane is more than something else she has more power than even she dreamed facing vampires with mind control power beyond anyone’s imagination. She meets the originals children the first turned. You also learn the lore in this book about where vampires originated. You learn new words about sanity and what vampires will do for sanity. Jane and Beast help save the day all while fighting with the Blood Master of the City of New Orleans. She also learns about the woo woo files that NOPD keeps which is surprisingly helpful. Definitely worth two days without sleep!

Leo wants Jane’s head for the death of his son, the fact that he died years ago and Jane despatched his killer wasn’t a point the Leo wanted to hear. Bruiser spends his time between appeasing his master and trying to assist Jane. I think he is a little sweet on her!

So Molly and the kids have come to NOLA for a break as hurricane Ada hits and they end up caught in another session of vamp politics to overthrow Leo.

Little Evan and Angelina are grabbed leaving Molly wounded whilst Jane and Beast go looking for the kidnappers and the vampire raising rogues.

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