Book Review: Heart of Evil by Heather Graham

Title: Heart of Evil (Krewe of Hunters #2)
Author: Heather Graham
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date:06/28/2011
ISBN: 0778329984







I don't really expect much from romance books. This isn't because I don't think that there can be some fantastic books in the genre (there's some amazing stuff out there), but because the main goal of romance & most fiction isn't to be some amazingly deep read. Their goal is to entertain & only to entertain, which I respect. Unfortunately you sometimes get things that fall short of even that modest goal, which is what happened here with this book.

Emerging from the bayou like an apparition, Donegal Plantation is known for its unsurpassed dining, captivating atmosphere, haunting legends…and now a corpse swinging from the marble angel that marks its cemetery’s most majestic vault. A corpse discovered in nearly the same situation as that of Marshall Donegal, the patriarch killed in a skirmish just before the Civil War. Desperate for help traditional criminologists could never provide, plantation heiress Ashley Donegal turns to an elite team of paranormal investigators who blend hard forensics with rare – often inexplicable – intuition. Among them is Jake Mallory, a gifted New Orleans musician with talent that stretches beyond the realm of the physical, and a few dark ghosts of his own. The evil the team unveils has the power to shake the plantation to its very core. Jake and Ashley are forced to risk everything to unravel secrets that will not stay buried – even in death…

Normally I'd have a huge paragraph of great things to say about an Adam Harrison related book, but this just isn't the case with this book. While I do like the characters & at times there's some good chemistry, there just wasn't a lot that really stood out here until the ending. I did like the pacing towards the end & it does have a nice little scene at the end as well as some great recipes.

It's just that most of the book felt forced & predictable. Some of the background characters just blurred into one big lump because there wasn't anything to really make them stand out or be exemplary from the rest of the cast. It was also fairly easy to predict the killer because there were only a few people who were described well enough to be the killer & one of those I was able to eliminate because *minor spoiler* one of the team members showed an interest in him *end spoiler*. Even the love scenes didn't really do much to rescue the book because more often than not the chemistry just wasn't present enough to really loop me in like previous books have.

As far as entertainment value goes, I can't muster more than 2 stars for this book. The Heather Graham fangirl in me keeps nagging me to raise the star rating to at least 3 stars, but it's that same fangirl who says "well... I've read a lot better, especially in the AH line of books".

Read this at the library. I wouldn't bother purchasing it unless you absolutely have the urge to keep your collection current.

2/5 stars

(ARC provided by Netgalley)

Book Review: Phantom Evil by Heather Graham

Title: Phantom Evil
Author: Heather Graham
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date: 03/29/2011
ISBN:0778329534







I'll admit that Graham's work has kind of suffered over the last few years, with some of her books not even holding a candle to how wonderful the earlier books were. (I don't know of many people who liked Dust to Dust, a title that has sat around on my bookstore shelves gathering well, dust.) She's released some stuff that's been pretty decent, but again- not stuff that's along the quality lines of her earlier releases. I almost passed this book up until I realized that it was an Adam Harrison book. Even though he's almost always a non-major character in the books, the ones that feature him are almost always great reads. This one generally followed that rule.

A secret government unit is formed under the oversight of Adam Harrison, famed paranormal investigator. The six members he’s gathered know a little of the otherworldly—each has honed a psychic talent of their own.

Jackson Crow, part English, part Cheyenne, heads the group. Haunted by his experience with an ancestral ghost who saved his life as a child, and the recent murders of two previous teammates, Jackson can’t tell if Adam’s demoted him or given him an extraordinary opportunity. Despite his link to the realm of spirits, he’s well aware that the living commit the most heinous crimes, with spiritualist charlatans existing merely to fool and seduce the unwary.

To counterbalance Jackson’s careful skepticism, Adam Harrison has paired him with Angela Hawkins, a young woman who learned the painful lesson of loss at an early age. A police officer utilizing her paranormal intuition in Virginia, she already has her hands full. But Adam’s call to New Orleans is strong.

The case: In a historic mansion in New Orleans’s French Quarter, a senator’s wife falls to her death from a balcony. Most think she jumped, distraught over the loss of her young son. Some say she was pushed. And yet others believe she was beckoned by the ghostly spirits that inhabit the house—once the site of a serial killer’s grisly work.

Whether supernatural or all too human, crimes of passion, greed and desire will cast the pair into danger of losing their lives...and their immortal souls.

I was sucked into this book incredibly quickly & I feel that most readers will be as well. I was also quite taken with both the official pairing in this book as well as the potential pairings for future books as well. (I doubt this book will be the last we've seen of this team.) The plot moves along very quickly & I was glad to see that the couple in this book doesn't play a huge amount of love games.

The only downfall to this book is that while the premise is wonderful & the interaction between our two leads has tons of chemistry, the "whodunnit" of the book just seemed a little well, farfetched & overly complicated. There's several different things going on at once & the ending just seemed a little rushed, as if Graham had intended for something more & just ran out of room. I couldn't help but feel like it was just a teensy bit anti-climactic.

Overall though, this was an incredibly fun read & it's very much a turn in the right direction for Graham. It's not a complete return to her earlier greatness but it's in the same vein- enough so that longtime fans will enjoy this book & new readers will find themselves wanting to read more of her work.

(ARC provided by Netgalley)