 | Title: Dark Taste of Rapture
 Sexual Content: Sex scenes, references to oral sex and masturbation, prostitution and human trafficking. Rating:
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Description
New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter captivates with a dark, tantalizing world of humans, otherworlders, and a powerful AIR agent consumed by his desire for a woman he can never have. . . .
With one caress, he can give unforgettable pleasure . . . or unending pain. . . .
Hector Dean is shaved, tattooed, and totally ripped—and he has a deadly secret. He is a walking weapon, capable of killing with a single brush of his fingertips. Little wonder he’s determined to remain on his own. But Noelle Tremain is a temptation like no other. She is beautiful and rich, with a party girl smile that hides a shocking vulnerability, and from the beginning his sizzling attraction to her is undeniable. For the first time, his stone-cold resistance is tested. But to be with her, he risks destroying her.
When a wealthy businessman is murdered in New Chicago’s seediest district, the two are partnered, and there’s no escaping what they both want: each other. Yet neither Hector nor Noelle knows what to fear more—the killer case, or their own lethal desires. . . .
Review
In DARK TASTE OF RAPTURE Gena Showalter offers us a trip back through the looking glass to Ava and Noelle's basic training as AIR agents. If this book is a love story, it is as much about the relationship of these two girls as any sizzling chemistry between Noelle and Hector. Some of the issues raised get resolved, some don't, and I'm on the fence trying to decide if all of these are intentional threads left dangling for the rest of the series, or if some of the story slipped away. Either way, in the end, this book was entertaining and fun, with enough one-liners and mayhem to keep me giggling through to the last page.
Laugh out loud lines aside, DARK TASTE OF RAPTURE does address some weighty issues. Hector and Noelle are both products of abuse, despite being from different ends of the socioeconomic ladder. Noelle diagnoses (and treats) her own insecurities and codependency, with more or less success, and she manages to be Hector's saving grace on occasion. All in all, despite the heinous treatment Hector suffered as a child, I felt like the two main characters were able to move forward with a minimum of second guessing and miscommunication. Showalter manages this both with the passage of time in this novel (starting with basic training and then jumping past the events of ECSTASY IN DARKNESS to Ava's bachelorette party), and by writing two protagonists that truly want to trust each other. Despite their tough exteriors, Noelle and Hector are gentle with each other where it counts. Hector's "skin condition" is a tough hurdle for any relationship, even when out in the open, though it added a little extra zing to every hands free encounter the two orchestrated. The only roadblock that seemed really out of place was Dallas’s vision. This gambit never really gelled as anything substantial (nor was it resolved in any way). I can only hope that this means Dallas will be featured front and center in the next Alien Huntress book.
The tough love camaraderie of Ava and Noelle can be a little over the top for me at times, as were the heavy handed descriptions of how much no one "gets" the real Noelle, but these blips on the radar were never enough to slow me down. Hector and Noelle's romance is sweet, and I enjoyed the back story and supporting characters as much as anything else. Showalter's Alien Huntress world is well rounded, and DARK TASTE OF RAPTURE is sexy, intriguing, and just the right amount of silly to keep me coming back for more.
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Gena Showalter is an auto-buy author for me. Her stories are entertaining and fun. Thanks for the post Julia.
ReplyDelete@Rain - I'm coming into your camp. Kresley Cole and Gena Showalter are just cracking me up these days.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book!! But like you, I was scratching my head on the Dallas thing. I never could figure out how or why he could have two opposing unchangable visions. I even went back and looked over the previous books to see if I had forgotten something, but with no luck. I'm hoping it gets explained at some point.
ReplyDelete@Jen - It was so anti-climactic how Showalter brushed it aside, it's got to come up again. A Dallas book would be SU-perb :-)
ReplyDeleteI enjoy these books by Gena, but one of your comments threw me off - it mentiones Hector as "shaved" which I seem to recall from the previous books as well, however the cover model has lots of hair blowing around. Am I missing something?? I HATE when the covers don't match the inside descriptions. Total pet peeve...
ReplyDelete@Denise - Hector has a bit of a complex about his hair (one of the first comments that cracked me up). When he and Noelle meet he's shaving his head for a "don't touch this" vibe, but later in the book he lets it grow in. The celtic tattoos are dead on, and his hair is described as dark-ish, I believe, so I think the cover model is a pretty good match.
ReplyDelete