Scarlet : All About Romance

Scarlet

Grade : C

A post-apocalyptic, futuristic with vampires and werewolves is what you get when you open the pages of Scarlet, the second in a trio of books about Gina “Red” Santiago. But,when you open it, you’d better hold on ‘cause it’s a bumpy ride.

Red has a few problems and that’s putting it mildly. She’s a werewolf who’s inner wolf won’t quite cooperate and change when Red needs her to. As a result of her abilities, she’s left her old life behind to live with her Alpha-wolf mate, Morgan, in the small town of Nuria in the Republic of Arizona. The town is filled with “Others”, those with special talents that have to be kept hidden to prevent their persecution. Since an uncontrolled wolf can reveal the small town’s secrets, she’s a threat to them all until she gets her act together.

Unfortunately, Red’s problems only get worse. When Morgan is suddenly pulled away to attend to what he deems an emergency, he leaves Red in charge of protecting the people of Nuria, who don’t exactly trust. When even stranger, unexplainable things begin to happen and suspicion falls on her, Red quickly becomes the town’s pariah – not to mention the obvious target of an outside threat from an old enemy who’s out for blood and the glory of revealing the supposed threat to pure blood humans.

Summers creates a post-apocalyptic world I fell right into. The destruction of the environment and government, as well as the shortages, hardships, dangers of a mob mentality, and greed for power from characters I could picture from the movie Total Recall are all things I would expect to see within a book using this setting. In these, I have to say that Summers did exactly what she needed to do to keep a reader riveted.

My problems, however, revolved around a worthless hero and a heroine who had more than a few TSTL moments. First and foremost, the hero leaves a very vulnerable heroine in a situation where she’s unknown and in a volatile situation. Secondly, his propensity to jump into something without thinking about consequences seemed completely selfish and just plain irresponsible. Her problems seemed to stem from his actions. If I were the heroine, there would be no book three with this hero and I’d also be extremely grateful for secondary characters. The heroine, a trained warrior, who is obviously the hero’s perfect match, also gets herself into some sticky situations that any person with the fight or flight instinct could avoid. Plus, she needed to knock some sense into a few of the townspeople. Put simply, their actions made the book hard to read for me.

Scarlet had so much potential. So much. However, excellent world building and interesting secondary characters can’t carry a book when there are major problems with the hero and heroine.

Reviewed by Heather Brooks

Grade : C

Book type : Paranormal Romance

Sensuality : Warm

Review Date : August 6, 2009

Published On : 2009