Samhain Publishing, $5.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-029-5
Fantasy Romance, 2008
Since they were kids, Kelvin Saunders and his neighbor Angelica Pierson are close. They are meant to be. They have been through some hard knocks together and they even want to lose their virginity to each other. They even have some kind of psychic bond between them, y’all. They are so forever ever after material. That is, until a fang face comes between them and spoils everything. Oh well. Angel survives the attack but she has no idea what happened to Kel that night when that fang face attacked her. Everyone assumes that he’s dead so he has to be, right?
Kel, alas, has turned into a fang face himself, but he’s the good guy though. As you may have guessed from the title, Hunter’s Edge is part of the author’s The Hunters series. Kel, having been rescued by our league of extraordinary boinking spooky superheroes, is now one of them. He meets Angel about twelve years later, but even before that, their mental bond still remains strong so poor Angel actually feels his hunger and even sleeps during the day when he does. As you can imagine, the poor woman is a mess. But perhaps succor is at hand when Kel and she finally meet face-to-face again.
Hunter’s Edge has romance, but this one is more of an urban fantasy style action adventure with romance rather than a straightforward romance. Various characters from previous books show up here and the romance between Angel and Kel is presented as fait accompli so there is little romantic development here, much less quiet time for Kel and Angel, if that is what you are looking for. The focus here is more on getting rid of the threat on Angel’s life and Kel dealing with his vampire nature. Anyone who expects a more romance-centric story will not find much of that here.
This one is however a fast-paced story with its share of thrills and naughty love scenes. This is a breezy and entertaining story. However, I also feel that the story could have benefited from an additional few dozen pages. The teenage relationship between Kel and Angel is depicted via some rather clichéd scenes of teenage bonding straight out of a Hallmark movie while their more adult relationship doesn’t have much opportunity to become better fleshed out as everyone is too busy whacking bad guys and all.
All in all, this is a fun read, but with it being somewhat on the underdeveloped side, I can’t help viewing Hunter’s Edge as an appetizer to tide things over until the author’s next book rather than a delicious meal in its own right.
By the way, what is with the expression of the guy on the cover? He looks as if he has just smelled something that he doesn’t like. Did the heroine release some intestinal gas at the wrong moment or something?
