This sequel was more interesting than the first book. The story was original and dark in a good way.
We get Anita's backstory, which makes her more relatable and interesting. She also starts going a bit dark and questions her morality. ( )

*3.5 ( )

The first one was ok, but I really liked this. Dominga Salvador was a good villainess. It was a good fast read and I was able to get into the story quite a bit. Hopefully there is a lot more Jean-Claude in the other books. I love his character. Anita just needs to sleep with him already. I am coming to this series way after the fact, My best friend is completely in love with it so it has to be good. I know a bit about the controversy and poor reviews for the later books. I can't really say anything about it yet as I haven't gotten that far. I'm not loving this series I however like. It is a very entertaining read so far. ( )

I don't remember enjoying the first book very much so only god knows why I picked this one up. I was pleasantly surprised though. My one problem was the interactions with Jean Claude, as their conversations got so repetitive I ended up skimming those parts.
Other than that I quite enjoyed it and found the mystery very interesting. ( )

Amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, absolutely loved it! I was waffling between a 4 and 5 star for most of the read, but the ending! Jean-Claude! Like many a teen girl, I had a thing for vampires back in the day. I've read and watched a lot of vampire stories and Jean-Claude has to be the best vampire in vampire history. I sped through this audiobook in two days and the voice acting was phenomenal. ma petite, Jean Claude's nickname for Anita, sounded like a come on every time he said it. I've never been a big fan of slow burn romances or enemies to lovers tropes, but this one works so much for me. Anita and JC are more frenemies than enemies. Anita has really sensible character-driven reasons for not engaging in a romance with him and JC has very sensible political reasons for wanting Anita in his corner/bed. So the tension between them makes sense.

Anita is so incredibly flawed that it's actually amazing that I find her so likeable. Anita is way too concerned about being "one of the guys," she always believes the ends justify the means, she's a black-and-white thinker, and a total prude. It's easy to see that Hamilton is setting Anita up for big character growth in some or possibly all of these areas throughout the rest of her series. This book in particular deals with Anita getting a better grip on her own identity. Is Anita a monster or not? We don't get a simple answer to that question. But in this book Anita psychology abuses a mentally ill clairvoyant, absolutely terrifies a disabled prostitute, and kills three humans. Several times in this book Anita is asked or asks herself "would you have really pulled the trigger? could you really kill me? could I be pushed to kill her?" Anita is pushed to wonder if she's a good guy or a bad guy and eventually she has to realize she's something in between, which would break her black-and-white view of the world.

Thematically, I found this book interesting. In particular there was a conversation between Anita and a necromancer who committed human sacrifice. Anita is trying to understand how someone so good could be pushed to kill. And it made me wonder if we're all capable of killing, but each of us has our own specific level of a metaphorical push needed to get there. While most of us need an incredibly hard and persistent shove to get there, Anita seems to only need a brush of the shoulder.

As much as I found this an entertaining ride, I'm also interested in it from a craft perspective. The Anita Blake is such a long-running best-seller series, that it's actually fascinating to see how Hamilton set it up. I love that she pushed romance to the background and gave Anita so many ways in which to grow and mature. There are always a few different plots or cases going on to keep things moving quickly and big life/death themes are touched on but never hamfisted into the story. It's just really solid storytelling. ( )