You Slay Me

Rating:
Summary: Very witty and funny excursion into Paris
Review: After thoroughly enjoying the Girl's Guide to Vampires and Sex and the Single Vampire, I just had to read this one. I found it to be a page turner, combining romance and mystery. The characters are compelling and the story keeps you guessing. I was surprised that her heroines from the other preceeding novels, Joy and Allegra, didn't appear with their were and vampire spouses. I also thought initially this book would be about the young Guardian from the second book. Katie Macalister has obviously done her research into the paranormal as she seems to have the lore down pat. (I'm not a practitioner, but an avid reader.) This is apparently the first in a series with the protaganist, Aisling Grey, and the ending literally leaves you hanging. It wasn't one of those that leaves you in anticipation. It was so abrupt, you ask yourself what happened, was that the ending? It's pretty bad considering the next book won't be out until May. It's like the entire story was written and someone chopped it right down the middle or something. We're still somewhere up around the peak in the plot and the book is over. (In a side note, I must prefer her paranormal romances to the "normal" ones. I purchased a couple of the others thinking they would be as likeable as Sex and the Single Vampire and A Girl's Guide to Vampires. They were not. I found them quite dull and considering the volume of romance novels I go through, that says a lot. I'm not talking about sex either. The characters nor the plot never really clicked with me. I highly recommend her paranormal novels.)

Rating:
Summary: love this series!
Review: Aisling Grey, through the generosity of her Uncle Damien, is embarking on a new career as a courier. As her first assignment, she has to take a gold dragon to one of her Uncle's customers in Paris. She arrives at the woman's home to find that she has been brutally murdered. A mysterious and very good looking stranger is also on the scene. He steals the dragon and disappears before the police arrive. The police naturally view her as a suspect and take her passport. Aisling is determined to find the guy who stole the dragon and thereby prove her innocence. After all, she really needs the job to pay alimony to her surfer bum ex husband. In the course of things, she finds out that the stranger, Drake Vireo, is a wyvyrn of the Green Dragons and that he thinks that she is his mate. Everyone also thinks that she is one of the Guardians of the Portals of Hell, and when she tries to use this to raise a demon to help her, she ends up with the only demon ever to be thrown out of Hell and stripped of his powers, so what good is this Guardian stuff anyway? All she wants is her dragon(the gold one not the green one) and to go home.

This book is typical of the author. She takes a serious aspect of horror fiction and makes you laugh out loud. The characters are well developed and the story line has me reading until way past my bed time. This is the start of a really great series.

Rating:
Summary: Do Not Read In A Public Place!!!
Review: I could NOT stop laughing and worst of all I found myself 'snorting'. This book is the funniest thing I've read in years. If you're feeling a little 'blue' and 'out-of-sorts' pick up this book, you'll feel better in no time at all.

The book is well written and the characters absolutely come alive on the page. I've read Katie's other books, but so far this one is the BEST. Her other works are are also 5 stars, but there's just something of this one that really touched me.



Rating:
Summary: One of the best I've read lately!
Review: I never write book reviews as I read too many to keep up with but this book has got to be one of the best books I have read lately in its genre. It is absolutely hilarious! I picked it up on a whim as I am not normally a reader of this author nor this subject matter ... now I am wondering if I can wait till mid 2005 to read the sequel. Hope this will become a series ... I loved it!

Rating:
Summary: Paris with a dragon, a demon, and a guardian. Oh my!
Review: Intelligent, quirky, and divinely funny... the hapless heroine stumbles into a murder with occult ties and discovers her own frequently lamented ties to demons and other fantastical concepts. Dragons, witches, and demons frolic alongside gung ho cab drivers and nosy police inspectors in this romp from the author of Sex and the Single Vampire and A Girl's Guide to Vampires. This novel takes place in a well designed alternative reality with laws that carry over from the previous works. The characters are creepy, warm, and oh so tempting. I can't wait for the next trip with Aisling.


Rating:
Summary: Dragons, Demons, and Kick-Ass Guardians...
Review: It will be impossible to wait for the next Aisling Grey book. I wanted to buy FIRE ME UP immediately ... waiting for sequels will be torture!

YOU SLAY ME is funny and sexy. There are times I had to stop reading to wipe the tears from my eyes because I was laughing so hard. The demon Newfie Jim is hilarious. Drake is yummy. And Aisling Grey is an appealing smart mouth who kicks some serious demon butt.

One of my favorite scenes is when Aisling uses self-defense moves (think Sandra Bullock giving a S.I.N.G. lesson in Miss Congeniality) to overcome Drake (he stole her aquamanile, after all). How she, her taxi-driving friend Rene, and the demon dog Jim get out of Drake's house was hilarious! And it's just one of the many funny scenes in the book.

If you like paranormal thriller romance (did I mention Drake is HOT?) with lots of twists and turns (I could not put this book down), you will enjoy YOU SLAY ME. I very highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Dumb, not ignorant
Review: Let me start by stating that I do think Ms MacAlister is a good writer. The problem with this book for me was not that the story was poorly written but that I found the female lead character dumb, not ignorant. She walked into situations that anyone else would have known not to go into (ie checking the obviously dead body for a pulse), and did so not out of ignorance (she later estimated the time of death since she watched the "Detection Channel" so much) but what can only be called stupidity. I can forgive ignorance in a character but stupidity in the lead just doesn't cut it for me. I found myself unable to even finish the book because I grew to dislike "Aisling" so much.

Rating:
Summary: Sexcapadism at its best!
Review: The quirky title caught my eyes and the storyline got me involved from the start! Klutzy, but lovable heroine Aisling and slightly scary but smoldering sexy Drake are at the heart of a murder/mystery/romance story. But my favorite character is her sidekick dog demon, Jim, with his quick quips and only too "human" foibles. Her cast of characters are well-chosen and only enhance the story. I'd like to read more about the dragons in their own story as well (hint! hint!).MacAlister's style of writing is quick, fast-paced leaving me a bit breathless. Her sense of humor is showcased in laugh out loud parts of the story, inadvertently waking up my slumbering spouse. I couldn't put it down and stayed up 'til the wee hours of the morning to finish this exhilirating sexcapadism!

Rating:
Summary: Very fun start of a series!
Review: This promises to be a fun, light paranormal series. You Slay Me is about a courier who travels to Paris to deliver a dragon statue and encounters a series of unbelievable events. The person she was to deliver the statue to is dead, and she is the only one there -- save for sexy Drake Vireo. He tells her he is a dragon and that she is a Guardian, several people from the underworld confirm this, and she thinks that everyone in France is nuts. She also thinks that Drake is the murderer. But when she is able to summon a demon, she comes to terms with the fact that there are indeed such things as dragons and magic. And when she is wanted for murder, she decides to uncover the mystery on her own. There are various fun twists throughout the novel.

The reviewer who states that this novel has little substance and that the heroine and monsters aren't dark and scary like the ones in the Laurell K. Hamilton and Kelley Armstrong books should know that this book is not meant to be taken as seriously as the ones by the aforementioned authors (two of my favorites, by the way). This novel, though paranormal, is more targeted to comedy and romance. You can't pick up a book with a cover like this one and expect a dark, sci-fi/horror novel. In this case, what you see is what you get and there is no mistaking the content of this particular book. Having said that, I think You Slay Me is a fun treat with a not-to-be-missed premise for a series. MacAlister did a great job incorporating romance, comedy, mystery and paranormal into the story. The characters are great. I loved demon-dog Jim. He is hilarious! And I also like Drake a lot. He is a sexy, promising, albeit somewhat underdeveloped anti-hero. I hope he is developed further in future books. The novel is quite funny, but most of the wit comes from the protagonist's internal monologues. The dialogue was funny only when Aisling bickers with Jim. Aisling is supposed to be flighty and kind of an airhead, a personality trait she wholeheartedly admits to having several times throughout the story, but MacAlister doesn't pull that off well, at least not as naturally as MaryJanice Davidson does with Betsy Taylor of the Undead series. I only had to read the opening paragraphs to realize that Betsy was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Anyway, all in all, You Slay Me is better than I had originally anticipated and I look forward to reading the other parts of the series as soon as they are released. I recommend this novel as a light, funny and entertaining introduction to a new paranormal series.

Rating:
Summary: Cute but lacking in substance!
Review: Yes, this was cute, light-hearted fun. However, it lacked wit in the dialogue, the plot was limited and the heroine was a bit of a twit. It needed more monstrous monsters, more horror and action and some soul from the main character. Apparently she lives a life where very few thoughts wander through her head and while she admits that, I did not find this aspect of her sympathetic or interesting. I do not understand how so many reviews gave this book five stars. This was cute and included a few unimaginative creatures that is the extent of it's charm.

Give me a tough, sexy, mouthy heroine and lots of truly evil creatures such as Anita Blake's adventures or Kelley Armstrong's many strong, imaginitive female characters and I can see giving them 3 and 4 stars.