Possession (The Turning, Book 2) Jennifer Armintrout (1/5 stars)

Okay I didn't really like the first book in this series much but I already had the second book downloaded on audio so I figured I might as well listen to it. I guess I can't say it was a waste of time because I was driving while I listened to it, but I can say I won't be reading any more of these books.

In this book Cyrus is brought back to life as a human and Nathan runs around mad possessed by something. There you have the majority of the book. Many pages are spent on Cyrus angsting about how he feels guilty for all he did as an "evil" vampire and him wondering how to atone for it. Nathan runs around killing people; as he is insane. This book is primarily about Max and Cyrus. Max comes to help Carrie help Nathan. There is a lot of time spent on Max's and werewolf girl's relationship. There is a lot of time spent on Carrie and her desperate need for Nathan to be alright and Carrie and her desperate need for Cyrus to be alright.

You here about Max not wanting to fall in love, about Carrie not being in love with Cyrus but loving him, and about Carrie loving Nathan but Nathan loving his dead wife. There really is not much plot development. I think you could have condensed this book down to maybe a page and called it done.

There isn't very much gore or violence in this book. There are a couple brief fight scenes. The amount of action is minuscule. Carrie proves herself to be as much of a victim as ever, despite her own thoughts that she has changed so much since killing Cyrus. She is still whinny and incompetent (both emotionally and physically). Even the new female lead character the werewolf woman; despite being less whiny and more competent, ends up needing a man to help here out and constantly shows her "vulnerable" side. This whole book was too much of the swooning woman and big man coming to help me type. I didn't like it at all; I kind of wished that Cyrus would go crazy and wipe out the whole lot of them. Of course, he didn't, he was just as whinny and indecisive as everyone else in the book.

I would recommend skipping this series altogether and reading something worth your time.
Here is a link to the book on amazon:

The Turning by Jennifer Armintrout (3/5 stars)

The book "The Turning" is the first in a series called Blood Ties. So far I believe there are 3 books in the series. I listened to this on audio book. Quit honestly the only reason I "read" it is that I saw it available on audible.com and I used one of my credits to download it.

Dr. Carrie Ames is an ER doctor. One of the trauma cases that comes into the ER effects Carrie in a strange way; the viciousness of his injuries make her literally sick. In order to confront what's seen as a weakness in the medical field, she goes to the morgue to assure herself that she can stand the site of such a vicious trauma. In the morgue she is attacked by the supposed dead trauma case and after a lengthy recovery starts to develop strange powers and weaknesses.

The book follows Dr. Ames as she tries to figure what is happening to her. She meets up with Nathan Grant who is a member of a group of vampires for the extinction of vampires; he helps her figure out how to cope with being a vampire. She struggles with the "blood tie" that draws her to her sire; the violent vampire Cyrus.

This is a mediocre book. All in all it was entertaining since I was driving and didn't have anything better to do. On a positive note there were some unique ideas. For example the blood tie is interesting. Typically vampire masters are seen as all powerful; in this book the blood tie works both ways. The blood tie leaves the master somewhat vulnerable to the fledgling vampire. This is an interesting idea. Another interesting idea is that there is a group of vampires solely dedicated to helping the extinction of their own race. I know many books follow a good vampire exterminating bad vampires and this is a variation of that but in a bigger and more organized way.

When I found out this was a harlequin book I almost didn't listen to it. I am not really into the romance genre. Surprisingly there really isn't any mushy horrible romance language in this book. In fact I would classify this book as more of a horror novel. The violence in this book is extremely graphic. Not quit as graphic as the early Laurell Hamilton Vampire Executioner novels; but very close.

Nathan and Cyrus were interesting characters. In fact most of the characters were pretty interesting excepting the most important one. I though Dr. Ames was weak as a female lead and a bit too much of a victim considering the circumstances she got herself into.

As for the quality of the audio book; it was very well read. The only thing that bothered me a bit was that the voices of Ziggy and Dahlia were too close to each other.

Will I read the next book? Probably since I already have it downloaded on audio book. Overall though I think this is another run of the mill vampire series. I am not sure if all these new vampire books are just mediocre or if I am just getting tired of the genre; but I didn't really see anything spectacular here.

Here is a link to it: