I devoured this second book and was up in the wee hours of the night savoring each of these pages.

Kyrian was mentioned in the first book, Fantasy Lover that I read last and I was so eager to learn more about him from the things Julian had said about him.

Kyrian of Thrace is a prince who renounced his title, gave up his family, and everything he had ever known for his wife Theone and she ended up serving him the worst betrayal of his life in the end.

I feel so horrible for the way that Kyrian was treated in his past and in this book you learn so much about the pain and trauma from his past. It makes you love him even more as a character. I have to give it to Kenyon, she knows how to create characters in a way that captures your heart.

Amanda Deveraux is an accountant who wants nothing more than a normal, mundane, and boring life but she was born into a family who believes in magic and all the things that go bump in the night. She was engaged to be married, but once her fiance met her family he called off the engagement.

Amanda and Kyrian meet in an unexpected collision of fate when Amanda is simply going to take out her twin sister Tabitha's dog and is kidnapped by a Daimon, the worst of daimons although she has no clue that this is the case.

She wakes up handcuffed to the most beautiful, sarcastic, stubborn man... vampire? Hunter? Hell, she didn't know because she didn't believe in any of that nonsense.

Until Kyrian.

Their story is so beautiful and their sexual chemistry guarantees that you'll need quite a few cold showers if you feel the need to cool down.

Kyrian has so many demons and past traumas to face as well as Amanda. Amanda deeply suppresses a part of herself that she is in huge denial about the whole book.

I loved seeing them both break down each other's walls and help one another heal.

This book while predictable in layout and progression was still so juicy in my opinion.

The ending left me a little uneasy when the goddess Artemis drops a bomb on Archeron (the first Hunter).

Prepare yourself for more Dark Hunter reviews, because I will be fully submerging myself into this series until I finish.

I wanted to like this, since there are so many fans of the author, and maybe the series/setting would grow on me of I read more books, but I honestly found this boring. This felt like standard mediocre bestseller vampire paranormal romance from the 90s, and I was surprised to see that this was published in 2002. Blending history and mythology with vampires was different, but not enough to keep my interest. Amanda's family appears in this book, but not enough is portrayed about their relationships to give Amanda's character nuance. The fantasizing just seemed to interrupt the story at an annoying frequency, but maybe that was the point, if it was supposed to show how distracting Amanda and Hunter found each other? Shrug. Accountant Amanda suddenly having extremely strong witch powers and a hot supernatural lover was too Mary Sue for me, especially with the author making sure to mention Amanda had never been "bold," as if to have her smexy scenes yet assuage any self-insert fan readers from feeling like "sluts." Magical power-stealing vagina, meh. I thought that had died with the Anita Blake books.

4.5*****

this was a really good book, but it seemed a little drawn out I don't know if it was my surrounding life that made it seem to be drawn out, but I quite nenjoyed it immensely.

Kyrian <3

This book sounded so promising, it was my first read by Sherrilyn Kenyon and I'd heard many people raving on about how great her Dark Hunter novels were; and as a fan of paranormal romance and urban fantasy, I couldn't wait to find another sexy, dark series to get into, complete with the usual array of vampires and mythology.

The problem with the paranormal romance genre, and even more so the urban fantasy genre, is that after you've read a few of them they all start to form a similar pattern with characters you begin to recognise from other books plus the same old storylines and ancient mythology (I'm getting so good at remembering greek gods). So, the trick is to give the reader what they came to get but put a unique twist on it, don't write the same story a thousand writers have churned out and surprise them with different characters (note: broody men aren't even that hot - sexy Spike always did so much more for me than sulky Angel). This story, unfortunately, had nothing new or exciting, it's hard to pick the plot and characters out of masses that I've read that are chasing each other round my brain. I couldn't get into the story or take much interest in either Amanda or Kyrian, their dialogue wasn't the cute, sarcastic banter that I love in good PR and UF but rather it was cliched and annoying - who actually says the words "made hot, sweet love" without laughing afterwards?

I also had so many problems with Kyrian (the dark hunter guy), I really don't care to be told a hundred times how gorgeous he is, when an author does that it makes me think that's all there is to the character and I immediately lose interest. He's so beautiful, so well-muscled, so this, that and the other. Shallow. The author seemed to care far more about his "cute butt" than the rushed-out back story of his wife's betrayal and his weeks of torture at the hands of her new lover. It was almost as if Kenyon decided at the last minute that Mr Perfect sounded very two-dimensional (which he did) and she came up with some weak pity story that just didn't work. And, as for the brooding I mentioned, please stop feeling sorry for yourself - it's been 2000 years, nobody realistically pities themselves that long.

I thought about giving it one star but decided that it wasn't that bad. It just didn't stand out from any other, and I know I'll find it easy to forget about. For that reason, I'm not going to bother with the rest of the series. But, I will say, I loved the Buffy references; if I met a vampire that didn't drink from humans, I'd say something like "oh, so you're like Angel!"