Nightshades

by Melissa F. Olson

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I’m not gonna lie. I saw that this was “paranormal thriller” and Luke Daniels and decided I had to give this series a try. I’ve really been on a thriller kick and I’ve always been a paranormal fan (going back to middle school). I’m a huge fan of Luke Daniels, so I was willing to give Melissa F. Olson a try. I’m so glad that I did. I really enjoyed this story.

So in this world, vampires are called shades. Not a lot is known about shades. They have managed to capture one. They have him contained in a prison they call Camp Vamp. When describing the main character’s visit to Camp Vamp, it was described very similar to the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Jodie Foster visits Anthony Hopkins. The cell has plexiglass and a sliding drawer to exchange stuff with him. But, they haven’t been able to learn much from him. Congress hasn’t classified vamps as non-humans, so his has all the same legal rights as any other American citizen, including no experiments or torture.

Our main character, Alex McKenna takes a job that no one else wants, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Preternatural Investigations. There is talk about even letting the shades have control of Chicago. Too many people have died. Too many agents. But Alex wants to prove that he is a good agent and that he didn’t just get his job because of his mother. He also knows that he is going to have to come at this issue in a new way, because the old ways aren’t working.

So this is a fairly short story, only about four hours long, which equates to less than 200 pages. I do wish this story was a bit longer. I thought this was a great start to the series. We meet some great characters. The story is set with the fight for Chicago against the shades. We get to meet the villains. We learn more about shades as Alex uses his new methods to tackle the Chicago problem.

If I was going to fault this story for anything, it would be the length. I would’ve liked a longer story. This one ends with a cliffhanger, which I am not a fan of (who is?). It would’ve been great if the author had kept the story going just a bit longer and found a better place to end, in my personal opinion. That being said, I really enjoyed the story and characters of this story. I already have book two in this series. I will be diving in soon. I really hope it doesn’t have the cliffhanger ending that this one does.

Narration
As I said, I’m a huge Luke Daniels fan and he didn’t disappoint with the narration of this book. He does a great job with male and female voices. He had a few accents that he had to manage in this book and he did them really well. I love his pacing for the story too. He always knows when to add more pauses for suspense and when to speed up because of the action. If you’ve never tried Luke Daniels, I highly recommend you search him out.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.