Library Liz·ard

so not what I was expecting! review to come.edited to add: Hiding this entire review since I can't think of a way to review this without totally spoiling it for anyone skimming the reviews for impressions! Merit has mourned Ethan for 2 months and her house is still under intense scrutiny by the GP when DD opens. Now unexplained natural disasters start occurring and the vampires, especially Cadogan House, are being blamed so she must join up with Grey House Guard Captain Jonah and the Ombudsman's office (soon stripped of their authority by the selfishly motivated new mayor) to figure out what the heck is going on. What follows is Merit's mostly boring investigation complete with false leads and dead end visits to the various other supernatural denizens of Chicago's environs. I have to say that in retrospect I guess I should have guessed the perpetrator's identity, since they seemed to pop up at various intervals like a red flag and would act mostly out of character! That said, I guess it kinda fit when I thought about it more and I am hopeful that that story line continuation will make the next book of the series more exciting. I did have a hard time ACCEPTING Mallory as our cracked out sorceress, however, mainly because I couldn't really get on board with Catcher being so flippin' oblivious to her descent into power hungry madness. *shrug*The ending, of course, is what will make most fans of the Chicagoland Vamps books stand up and cheer but it made me mostly wince and wonder if it didn't all feel a little too pat. After all, we were warned that any human familiar brought back from the dead would have no trace of free will or prior personality/memory etc. So when Ethan emerges from the mist mentally intact, thanks to the oh-so-timely disruption of Mallory's spell, I can't help but feel it was a bit too easy, but maybe that's just me. Honestly, I think that after 5 books I've realized that I don't feel the same degree of attachment to Merit and Ethan's relationship that most fans do. I think it's because I have a hard time really knowing Merit and how she feels. Anytime a potentially huge emotional scene starts to build it's over and forgotten before it's even begun. Merit consistently avoids expressing any feelings and that leaves her character to fall extremely flat for me.I hold out hope that book 6 can turn it around and make me care a little bit about the series again. Now that she's loved and lost hopefully Merit will let loose a little and feel!!