Flirt (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #18)

by Laurell K. Hamilton

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss.

But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn't the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington's grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington.

Not really. And not for long.

• ISBN10: 0755374371
• ISBN13: 9780755374373
• Publish Date: 3 February 2011 (first published 2 February 2010)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
• Imprint: Headline Book Publishing
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[FranJessca @ A Book Lovin' Mama's Blog]

Flirt was one of the first books in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series that had my heart palpitating. I don’t particularly appreciate it when authors put some of my favorite characters in jeopardy. I know it makes the story exciting, but you cross the line when you risk my book boyfriends. 

I mean, it’s inevitable in this series that the FMC will be in danger, but to put Micah, Nathaniel, and Jason in jeopardy, I will have words with the author. I love Laurell K.Hamilton, though, even when she writes stories like this one where I have to race through the book to determine if I need to go through the book and save my boys. Although, I never doubted Anita in this book. She’s one of my favorite kick-butt heroines. I know she’s bothered by anyone harming her lovers, too. 

Storyline/My Thoughts: The eighteenth novel involves Tony Bennington desperately wanting to have his wife raised from death. The issue is Anita won’t do it, which makes Tony resort to doing something irrational to get Anita to do it, which puts her men at risk because Tony hires people who threaten Anita’s men to get what Tony wants from her.
She will do anything to protect them, even raise a zombie she knows is wrong in every way possible. She’ll do it to protect her men, though, and I would have done the same thing as her.

I love how Laurell K. Hamilton had this as a shorter novel to Anita’s world, and she included in the storyline something that happened to her in real life that involved flirting, hence the title of the book. I love this scene in the book and how Anita learned how to flirt with the help of one of her lovers. This is before the drama happens in the book with Anita and the villains in the story.

Anita’s harem does grow in this short novel because she meets Nicky. He’s the one character who will end up falling hard for Anita is put in a precarious position when her ardeur hits, and she’s being summoned to raise a zombie. Someone has to do it, and Nicky steps up, and that is when Anita does something she’s never done before with any of her guys. I won’t go into further detail, but this may end up causing issues later on with Nicky.

Yes, this book may have caused me stress while reading it for the second time. It was a short one compared to the longer novels, but it still hit me hard, and I did enjoy it.

I love when Anita has to use her necromancy powers in the series, and this one has her really diving into her powers. She’s not someone to mess with now after she’s ganged so much strength in the last several books. I know some readers are bothered by Anita having a lot of spice in her life and having so many potential lovers she’s gained, but she has the ardeur and shifter strains to deal with in her life. I have sympathy for Anita because she’s grown as an individual since book one, and I love her for it. She’s well-loved, that’s for sure, and I read it at the end of this book when her men came to save her when she really didn’t need saving. She knows how to handle herself.

This is why I love LKH’s writing style and the world she’s created. I love reading about Anita’s growth in this crazy world she’s in with all the beautiful men who adore her. LKH is very descriptive in her writing and puts feeling behind it, too. LKH was the first author I read back in the early 2000s that had RH/Why Choose trope in it, and she’s why I’m now obsessed with reading more books with that trope. I don’t care if I get judged for loving Anita’s world and how she has grown with power and even has so many lovers to love on her. She will forever be my top-fave female kick-butt heroine.

I give this book 4.5 stars and look forward to continuing my reread of this series. Now, if only LKH would stop putting the men in danger, that would be great. Although, it does kick Anita into gear on realizing how much she cares for them. =)

Standalone or Part of Series: It’s part of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and I recommend reading in order.

Would I recommend this book? Yes. If you enjoy Urban Fantasy with RH/Why Choose in it, this book/series is for you. Now, the first few books don’t have RH in it but it does come later.

[Hixxup]

OK so because of the fact that Nathaniel and Micah aren't particularly my fave characters in the book, and I wish they would move on, or move away, not die because they are good characters but more like *POOF BE GONE* I know i'm a minority in that, and that's ok. But anywho the scenes where they were all mushy gushy I just sat their and rolled my eyes. And in the restaurant where they brought up that Nathanial's flirting wasn't approved by Anita and Micah, I actually sat there thinking that if LKH would expand Nathaniels character I would probably like him more, like how he's getting more dominance, that now he can find him someone else??!??!? The lion thing, Ok yeah I get it, she's got all these animals and needs to have that one that aligns well with her animals and all that, but I did not like what she did to Nicky, I felt really bad for him, and it really pissed me off that he's like this lost little kitten now because she took his free will away. Though the zombie scene was pretty epic. Sometimes I think in the Anita books the placement of the whole dominance thing is put in, in the wrong places, and the parts I think should have more of it, is highly slacking. It just brings me back to the whole thinking Anita is such a bad ass, but yet a major pansy ass at the same time. I think she needs to start weeding out her "lovers" and just keep them as lovers "bed mates". But I guess since the ardeur that's not going to happen ::SIGHS::

[wyvernfriend]

The more I think about this book the more it creeps me out.

There will be spoilers.

So it's a typical Anita Blake novel from the recent lot. Jean-Claude is at a distance, Richard is invisible boy and mostly Anita is working with the were-pack of toy boys.

The story starts with an incident that is apparently based on a real-life incident Laurell has with some friends while travelling (only with more clothes, Anita's men seem to favour tank-tops). Recounted by Laurell in an afterword and shown in a cartoon it's vaguely entertaining.

Bracketing this Anita has meets with clients who want her to resurrect their dead spouses, neither for good reasons. I'm not quite sure why Tony Bennington wants his spouse back, he doesn't come across as wanting her, just wanting the appearance of her. The other, Ms Natalie Zell wants to punish her husband for dying on her. So when someone kidnaps Anita and some of her harem to force her to resurrect a body, they're not sure. The kidnappers have cut Anita off from her power and Anita has to use one of them to save her men.

So she takes his free will from him. And then debates with her guys about letting him join her harem. She basically rapes him, and then dismisses the consequences as if they didn't exist. This is one of my problems with Anita, her actions have little consequence, she doesn't really regret much about how she treats people, it's her past that matters, her issues that surface again and again.

I'd like to see a book where Jean Claude and Richard do an intervention, force her to think, to actually pay attention to the consequences of her actions rather than drifting through her world collecting power tokens and gaining a lot of power, too much power. She imbalances the power in the world and there's nothing done about that.

And then there's the taster of the next book, where a five-year-old insists on being kissed on the lips, like the big boys do and I'm squicked even more.

Sorry, no, this is it. I have to stop punishing myself like this and declare an end to reading this series. This was a short that I flew through and it's made me quite squicked with the world, I now need to read something exceedingly fluffy to ensure I don't lose the plot entirely.

[Hillary]

http://purplemoonmyst.blogspot.com/2011/01/flirt.html

[ibeforem]

This novella was just okay for what it was meant to be — a short exploration of flirtation, a return to Anita’s day job, and a way to give Anita one more animal to call. Unfortunately, the flirtation stuff was a little overdone. In a scant 156 pages of story, the word "flirt" is used 31 times, and the word "flirting" 21 times. Too. Much. I wanted to mail her a thesaurus. There’s also a lot of the usual Anita self-reflection, analysis, and denial, all of it telling us nothing new about her character or her situation. If you’re stubborn like me (yes, I finally admit it) and intend to follow this series to the end no matter what, then give this a read. Or email me and I’ll share the salient points. If you’re ready to put the Anita Blake series to bed, this book isn’t going to change your mind.

[g2pro]

Yet another Anita Blake book. I've read all the books in the series to this point. I have to say that the series has started going down hill and most of the books are just filler between sex scenes. Where has all the story gone. I don't know if I'll keep reading this series.

[Melanie]

This is not my favorite Anita Blake book, but I'll take it. This book is unlike any of the other Anita books (with Micah maybe as the exception). Usually in the Anita world, there is always either police work or vampires/wereanimal politics. It was just a little strange to not have any of these. It is pretty much all about zombies.

I really liked how the story was told about how the book was written at the end. It is funny how the two different people could take the exact same real-life story and turn it into two completely different fictional stories.

Following LKH on Twitter has helped me understand her writing procedure better and I think it makes me anticipate and get more excited about the books coming out. Having the entire process in the back of this book has explained even further than she does in the blog and Twitter.

I will now attempt to wait patiently for Bullet to come out in June. How long do you think the patience will last?