Succubus Dreams (Georgina Kincaid, #3)

by Richelle Mead

[Berls]

3.5 stars

I have mixed feeling about Succubus Dreams. There was a lot about it that I enjoyed - the story was compelling, I got some answers I've been searching for, etc - but I had some frustrations as well - mostly in the main character, Georgina. I buddy read it with Anne and I think she shares my opinion for the most part, also giving it 3.5 stars.

One big positive is that this series is proving very easy to come back to after a brief break and pick up without any confusion. I think that means that Richelle Mead does a good job of dropping little reminders without doing a recap (I find full on recaps frustrating), and that also the characters are memorable.

My big question from the first 2 books was where/when was Georgina born?! And I finally got a concrete answer in Succubus Dreams, rather than the illusions we've had previously. I was so happy to finally have that answer - but it also drove home a frustration I have with Georgina. Well 2 frustrations. The first being, how does she know so little about her world (the paranormal world) after so long? And why is she learning so much all of a sudden? What's changed to make her suddenly start learning about her world when she didn't for centuries? My second is - Georgina is OLD and yet, she is incredibly immature. Not teen immature, but 20s? Maybe because that's the age range she pretends to be so often that it's made her actually that way? IDK, but it's frustrating.

That frustration aside, this story was very compelling. It focused more on her world than the human world - a change from previous books - and resulted in some pretty intense/gut-wrenching moments. Her relationship with Seth also hit some major developments and that was a great part of the read. We got quite a few flashbacks to another period in her life and I enjoyed those moments immensely. And we're really well setup for future books, with some burning questions that could really impact where this series goes. I'm very excited to see.

The narration was again performed by Elisabeth Rodgers and I'm really enjoying her delivery of the characters. One interpretive choice she made was to give Georgina a different accent in a flashback and I thought that was brilliantly done (I don't know if that was in notes from Richelle Mead or all her own doing but I loved it) - it made transferring to that moment in time even more believable as a different life ago. So I look forward to more with her narration as well.