Book 3:
Winterblaze: Poppy Lane and Winston Lane
Release Date: February 26th, 2013
Purchase on Amazon: Kristen Callihan - Winterblaze (Darkest London)
Summary:
Once blissfully in love . . .
Poppy Lane is keeping secrets. Her powerful gift has earned her membership in the Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals, but she must keep both her ability and her alliance with the Society from her husband, Winston. Yet when Winston is brutally attacked by a werewolf, Poppy's secrets are revealed, leaving Winston's trust in her as broken as his body. Now Poppy will do anything to win back his affections . . .
Their relationship is now put to the ultimate test.
Winston Lane soon regains his physical strength but his face and heart still bear the scars of the vicious attack. Drawn into the darkest depths of London, Winston must fight an evil demon that wants to take away the last hope of reconciliation with his wife. As a former police inspector, Winston has intelligence and logic on his side. But it will take the strength of Poppy's love for him to defeat the forces that threaten to tear them apart.
Review:
I absolutely love Kristen Callihan, she has quickly become one of my favorite authors! The planning, plotting and sheer talent it must take to write one of her novels amazes me. She just has this way of taking little bits and pieces, stringing us along and then BAM it all comes together in the end that has you thinking now why didn’t I see that. In a romance genre it can sometimes be hard to be surprised but with every Callihan novel, I am surprised at least once. This novel is no exception to that trend and Callihan pulls out all of the stops for this one.
At first I had a hard time liking Poppy, she just seemed so remote, she was hard to get a read on and she didn’t seemed very “flawed”, she is so controlled and keeps things close. Little by little you see cracks I her façade and she becomes more likeable, she is a fierce protector at heart and a lot of that control was to make sure everyone was safe. Poppy has not lead a safe existence, as a part of the SOS she has been undercover pretty much her whole life. Secrets are second nature to her, but if she doesn’t want to lose everything she has to open up her life to her husband and let him. Just the thought of bringing Winston terrifies her, there is so much that can go wrong. Poppy ends up being such a strong character, I loved watching her walls start to crash down. It is than that we see the real Poppy and not the one she has had to be for so long. But, with a very powerful Demon after her and Winston, either her or Winston may not live long enough to make everything right…
Now, Winston I really wasn’t into that much from the previous books, as an inspector he popped up in both FIRELIGHT and MOONGLOW. In this book from the get go we see another side of Winston. We see a venerable side; we see the scarred man, both inside and out. There is so much more to Win that we never knew in previous books. I loved learning about him, by the end I was quite smitten with him and his strength of character. He also has a sharp mind that can put things together that others cannot, and that makes him an opponent that you don’t really see coming. He is underestimated at every turn, even by Poppy in the beginning but he proves himself quickly. But quickly, may not be soon enough, as there is a price on his very soul and the demon is ready to collect!
This book takes us on twists and turns as we navigate the London underground scene. We learn things in this book about new supernaturals that we did not know in previous books. More comes out about the GIMs and they have more than a few tricks up their sleeves! Marie and Jack Talent are in this book quite a bit and their skirmishes are quite entertaining. There was a moment with Talent that had me in tears; just thinking about it has me tearing up again! (You make me cry, you get a five rule!) As a character I have always loved Talent and it just broke my heart, but he’s strong so I have faith that he will pull through. I also quite enjoyed the ending in this book, it pulled everything together quite nicely. It wasn’t looking so good there for a moment for Winston and Poppy and I was wondering how Callihan was going to pull it out, but in true fashion she pulled it off spectacularly. This book was another rousing success from a rising star!
*This book was provided through NetGalley for an honest review. No other compensation was provided.
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