Ardeur

by Danielle Gavan

[Cocktails and Books]

Ardeur Lisle has had a very rough life. She's been able to see the dead since she was an infant, which means she was tormented by some fairly nasty spectors. Her parents neglected her (and that's putting it nicely) before deciding to sell her, at the age of 12, to a terrorist cell who decided to raise a demon and use her body as it's vessel. For seven years, she was forced to endure the abuse and torment from her captures while forced to carry out their ugly deeds. The one bright spot in her otherwise horrible life is the memory of a six year old boy was nice was to her when she was still allowed to attend regular school. It's the memory of his eyes, his smile and his gorgeous dimples that help her devise her escape plan in hopes of finding him.

Brody Callaghan has spent years remember the face of the grade school girl who disappeared one day. It's always been one of his goals to track down Ardeur to find out what happened to her. Her tangerine scent still haunts him. The last place he expected to find her was running past him on the way home from the grocery store. He also wasn't expecting to witness her being hit by a BMW and seriously hurt. After tracking her down at the hospital (and finding her gone) he speaks to a friend of Ardeur's and discovers what she really is. Still determined to get to her, he leaves for the Abbey of Angels.

The story starts to pick up as soon as we get to the Abbey, because Brody finds Ardeur and they begin "courting", but it also picks up a completely different plot line and leaves behind the one that started the story. The Brody element was good (although I find it hard to believe a man has harbored a thing for a little girl he knew in passing as a six year old. Her holding onto him makes sense, him...not so much), but we were taken down a path of the Angel of Death being obsessed with Ardeur and trying to come between her and Brody. What about the people who bought her and made her possessed with the demon? What were they up to? Are they still searching for? Will they find her?

Because of the shift in the plot, I was left wondering what we were supposed to take away from this story. I get that Ardeur finally found her place in the world and have people who love her, but we still have all those questions about why she was taken and who those individuals were, that even her ultimate revenge on Shade didn't close that loop for me.