Review: Gena Showalter - The Darkest Secret

Lords of the Underworld Series:

Book 9:

The Darkest Secret: Amun/Secrets and Haidee

Summary:

Amun is the keep of Secrets; he immediately knows every one of your deepest darkest secrets and what you are thinking. On a brutal trip to hell Amun absorbed hundreds of the demons into himself and now they are literally swarming around in his head and body driving him mad, until… Haidee has been reborn hundreds of times and each time she remembers none of the good and all of the bad from her previous lives. There are two things that keep her going. 1. Her hatred of the Lords of the Underworld and killing as many of them as she can and 2. The dark skinned man from her dreams that she has finally found in one of her fellow Hunters Micah (or so she thought).  The Lord Strider has captured her, drugged her and thrown her in a room, when she awakes, she starts hearing a voice in her head. Thinking a fellow hunter is next door she breaks through the connecting door to see Micah (or so she thinks) beaten and chained to a bed. When she gets close to him his trashing seems to calm and she feel a pull to him that she has never felt in the past. When Amun wakes up he is finally thinking clearly for the first time in what has to be days, but what he doesn’t understand is why there is a beautiful woman curled up next to him.  Soon Amun comes to realize that Haidee is a Hunter and not only that but the Hunter that was responsible for his best friend Baden’s death, but somehow he can’t seem to kill her. Will Haidee try to kill Amun as soon as she realizes he’s not her boyfriend Micah but in fact a Lord of the Underworld. If they survive each other, the odds of surviving their trip to hell (literally) are not good.

Review:

So I have to admit when I found out that Amun’s love interest was going to be Baden’s killer I wasn’t all that thrilled. I was of the Lords frame of mind of how could Amun fall for the woman that was responsible for his best friend’s death. It just didn’t sit that well with me, but, Gena works her usual magic and by the end you were sympathizing with Haidee.  Haidee actually has a pretty strict moral code and a backbone of steel. After so many life’s and deaths, she comes back a little bit harder and more determined to stay alive. Her rebirths are extremely painful and she comes back filled with hate and only the bad and painful memories.  Amun seems to be the only person that thaws the ice within her. Amun has the heavy burden of carrying around everyone’s secrets, he can’t even speak without spewing every secret that he has learned but he finds that he can speak directly into her mind.  In the past books Amun never speaks so to find someone that he can so freely communicate, you are really happy for him.  Going into this book, you don’t know much about Amun so you don’t really have any preconceived notions, but I was still surprised that he is such a gentle soul and kind of like a big teddy bear. I was not expecting that, but like it all the same! GS will throw you some other twists that might make your jaw drop a little, but I’m not going to tell what they are. This book is also filled with Gena’s typical humor! Some of the text messages between brothers are hilarious! And who know Strider was so funny! Gena starts setting up the next book featuring Strider as well in this book or watch out for that!  This was a good solid read, it isn’t one of my favorites of the series, Aeron gets those honors but I really enjoyed it!

Rating:

4 moons out of 5