Desert Devil

by Colleen Helme

[Berls]

My top thoughts:

I'm always excited when I see an email from Colleen in my email because it means there's another book coming! And as much as I love Shelby, I'm loving having these new adventures from Ella St. John and I love the series cross overs! This one took some very unexpected twists and I'm really excited to see where the series will go from here.

What I liked/didn't like:

I'm enjoying Ella learn more about her abilities and trying to find her purpose. I'm not a very religious person, so even in book 1 I was a little hesitant about the potential religious connotations of her abilities. But I'm finding that it works for me really well - I think that if you are religious it will work but as a non-religious reader it works because it's also really easy to just see her abilities and these players as supernatural characters. What I'm really interested to see is if there are any overlaps to understanding Shelby's abilities as we get this new lens for understanding Ella's abilities. Shelby has never really known WHY she can do what she can do... perhaps it is caught up in this world? I'm just speculating, of course, but since she and Ella are likely to have more and more run ins based on what I've seen in this book I think it's possible (and I'm excited for however it plays out)!

The actual story -- I marked it as a cozy mystery because that's how I've been categorizing Shelby, but I'm not sure if it really fits that classification now that I think about it -- was really strong as Ella and her new husband Creed navigate their new life together and also trying to help protect his sister who is standing witness to a powerful crime lord (from the previous book). There was lots of plot twists and action up to the very end! I love all the characters and am looking forward to getting to know them all better in future books.

Narrator thoughts:

The narration by Stevi Incremona really works well for me in this series. I continue to be really happy with the way Stevi voices Shelby's character - after years of listening to her with a different narrator, I'm surprised by how well that works! Definitely a good listen!