Reviewed by Vicki

TITLE: Vulnerable

SERIES: Little Goddess #1

AUTHOR: Amy Lane

PUBLISHER: DSP Publications

LENGTH: 304 pages

BLURB:

Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.

And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.

2nd Edition

REVIEW:

I’d like to start off this review by saying that you need to know this book is not an m/m romance. There are girls in this story…. If you are ok with that, this is an amazing book and you should read it! I’d say it’s urban fantasy, with some romance, some sex (but not overly graphic), and some amazing characters.

I read this book first in November 2010, I’d been reading m/m for a bit over a year. I had read the first two Promises books by Amy Lane and loved them, I had been looking at the Little Goddess books, but I was on such an m/m kick that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back to m/f. But I bought the first one in the series, Vulnerable, and loved it. Girl bits and all! Apparently it’s the first book Amy wrote, and she self published it, so it had some edit issues. Apparently. Because I didn’t notice at the time that there was anything wrong with the book! I just loved it as it was…. So now DSP Publications, an offshoot of Dreamspinner Press, has picked up the series. This is the first one released, and it has been re-edited, and given a gorgeous new cover. I am so happy to be reading this series again. Ok, let’s talk about Vulnerable.

This is the starting off point of an amazing collection of books. The main series follows Corrine Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick (Cory), as she gets deeper and deeper in to the magic that exists in our world. At the start of the book, she is a clueless nineteen year old, fighting her way through community college, working nights at a Chevron, wearing way too much makeup, dyeing her hair black, desperate to get out and see the world. An nice little emo girl. She begins to notice odd things about the customers that come in late at night, eventually having her magical eyes opened by Arturo, who she thinks is just a man that works at Denny’s. It turns out he’s a high elf of some considerable age! Next to expand her knowledge of things magical is Adrian, a vampire. This leads her to Green, the leader and provider for the local paranormal folks. They all live in Green’s Hill, which is literally a cave/home that Green has carved out of a hill side in norther California. Green and Adrian came to Cali some one hundred and fifty years ago, and have created this whole community/commune of folks. Fae, sidhe, shifters, vampires, and such. All living together in harmony.

So Cory gets drawn in to this whole world, it turns out she has quite a bit of magic herself. There is a bit of a mystery going on, someone has been causing shifters to explode, a human has died, something nasty is going on. Green, Adrian, Arturo, Cory, and another elf named Bracken all work together to find out what is going on and stop it. Meanwhile Cory is building a relationship with Adrian, and eventually Green as well. That is where the sex comes in. Cory is a virgin, giving herself to Adrian, and soon Green, who has had a relationship with Adrian for 150 years. So we get some girl-boy sex, and some girl-boy-boy sex. This is not an erotic novel, there is sex and it is fantastic, but it’s more about the magic, the love and the relationship between the three than the actual sex. We know what’s happening, but it’s not graphic. Green is healer, using sex to help people both physically and emotionally. So he not only has sex with Adrian and Cory, but others as well. The fae folk have a different idea about sex, there is no shame, and not really any monogamy. Cory seems fine with this, and we get just a glimpse of literally magic making sex. Cory comes in to her powers through sex (pun intended!), and learns to use this power for the good of the folks of Green’s Hill.

As you can see, it is a complex plot with lots of characters. Good guys and bad, lots of magical creatures, we really are just learning about this world that Amy has created. The characters are fantastic, obviously Cory, Adrian and Green, since we see them most. The perspective changes from chapter to chapter, with the name of the character at the top of the chapter so we know who we are seeing. I loved that. Sometimes I can’t tell who’s head we are in until a couple of pages has passed, when the perspective changes so much, but this is clear and easy.  I’m trying not to say much about the plot, but I do have to say there is a very traumatic death in this book that anyone who has read the original version of, is still pissed off at Amy about! I was quite traumatized by it. To the point that in another one of her books it looked like someone may be about to die, I had to email Amy and make sure I could continue that book, I didn’t trust her after this one! But even knowing what was coming on this re-read, I still loved the book. There are several additional books all set in the same world, following different characters that all interact. All of the books are fantastic and worth reading. This one just starts it all off. I am so happy Amy is re-releasing these, I didn’t notice editing issues in the first version, so I can’t tell you if this is better, I assume it is. It’s just a fantastic book. Even with girl parts!

What can I say about Amy’s writing that I haven’t already said? Not much. She’s fantastic, I love everything she writes. Her plots are complex, as are her characters. This world works very well, I love books that are set in our world but not. This is a great one. If you liked her other books, you should try this series, even though it’s not strictly m/m. If you like urban fantasy, try this series. I can’t wait for the others in this series to be released, but the new one that will be out at some point. Yeah!

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

DSP Publications

Amazon