Sweet Ruin (Immortals After Dark, #15)

by Kresley Cole

[Melanie]

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

This story starts off with Josephine and Thaddeus from several years ago. Thad is just a baby and Josephine is just a preteen herself. They are living on the streets, but visit a librarian who provides them with food and tries to convince Jo to come live with her and her husband. Jo has no memory of her past. Just just woke up with the boy in her arms. She has no idea she is part of the Lore until after she is killed before her thirteenth birthday. Even then, she doesn’t understand what she is.

Rune is extremely old, like older than Nix old. He is part of a new faction of immortals in the Morior. They are very old and don’t live on Earth. Rune is a manwhore and uses his body to get information for the Morior and their leader, Orion. He is sent on a mission to kill Nix, because Orion doesn’t like how Nix is playing with the future. Rune is also a Dark Fae, half elf and half demon.

I loved the beginning of this book with young Thad. Jo teaching him such colorful language was hilarious. I also loved Josephine. She was a great heroine. She is everything you would expect from a IAD character. She was funny, strong and likes to “hulk smash”. Rune, on the other hand, is nothing like the heroes I’m used to seeing in the IAD world. He doesn’t seem very keen on giving up his ways even after finding Jo.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. I really liked Jo. I loved that we learned more about Thad. We got to spend more time with Nix, maybe the the most in any book. We didn’t get much of the other characters, just a few glimpses. I did miss seeing more of them. There was a ton of action and lots of sex. Also, many new characters, which makes me wonder where Cole is planning to take this series and what her endgame is. I’m also very curious as to how many more books she is planning on in this series. While I love this series, I’ve been burned by series that run for too long. I’m not to that point yet, but I don’t want to get there either.

Narration
Once again, Robert Petkoff nails this series. He just blows me away every time I listen to him read one of these books. His ability to pick up any accent as needed is miraculous. He makes it sound easy. My favorite part in this book was once again at the very beginning with baby Thad. I just loved it. If you haven’t tried this series on audio, you’re really missing out.