Synopsis: Eve Levine — half-demon, black witch and devoted mother — has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can’t be killed again — which comes in handy when you’ve made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn’t too bad — all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter, Savannah, and she’ll be happy.

But fate — or more exactly, the Fates — have other plans. Eve owes them a favor, and they’ve just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy — previous hunters have been driven insane in the process. As if that’s not problem enough, the only way to stop her is with an angel’s sword. And Eve is no angel. . .
-Goodreads

Review: Another epic addition to the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong. I really do mean epic as every book in this series seems to have far reaching effects that stem from the actions of one central character. Having some idea of where this series is headed and who the ultimate central figure will be, it makes for a great read seeing how everything comes together throughout the course of the books.

While Eve Levine is hardly my favorite woman of this series so far, she spent a lot of her time with some other very cool, well fleshed out characters that I would have loved to hang out with. I also love that these books don’t limit themselves to characters who are in their prime. It adds a great element of realism to a series that is otherwise characterized by witches and the afterlife.

The afterlife is where we spent most of our time in Haunted and there is no question that Kelley Armstrong spent a great deal of time fleshing out the rules of the world she created, adding various layers and nuances before throwing her characters into the mix. The various afterlife possibilities suit the secretly magical world that had already been established for the living.

That being said, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the addition of angels and references to a creator but it was all handled well enough. I like to have some hard and fast rules with any magical series and this left a little too much up to the imagination, but when tackling these kinds of issues I’m really not sure what else you can do.

The plot itself was a whirlwind and a lot of fun. Despite the gradual changes to the arc of the series we also got to watch Eve attempt to capture a supernatural, body-jumping, demonic serial killer.

Overall, definitely a good book and this is still one of my favorite urban fantasy series but I just can’t realte to Eve the same way as I have the other women of the Otherworld. She’s still completely kick-ass though, no question. I will absolutely be continuing with the series, as what initially promoted me to get to reading them again is that I found the next three at a garage sale a couple months ago now. Score!

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Second Opinions:
@Concise Book Reviews
@Ruby’s Books
@Fangs For The Fantasy