The author’s Marked Souls series is one that I have followed from the beginning and the latest installment, Vowed in Shadows, certainly will not disappoint. Her deeply damaged hero and heroine prove once again that love can heal the most imperfect and tormented of souls.

Exotic dancer Nim “Naughty Nymphette” Hamlin knows that she has mesmerized the mysterious one-armed man who comes to her club each night. She has seen him watching her, though he never approaches her. One night she goes right up to him and offers a dance, telling him that she’s noticed him paying attention to her.

What Jonah must tell Nim is that he pays attention to her because she has a demon inside her and that her demon is rising. Nim is possessed by a teshuva, or repentant demon, and she will join Jonah and his league in their fight against the evil forces. Her demon has called out to Jonah’s, which is why he came, and he explains to Nim that she will be a talyan, or possessed warrior, who fights against evil in order to earn a measure of grace and to hopefully someday save herself despite the demon that has possessed her. As one can imagine, Nim is less than thrilled about being told that her life now belongs to a league she doesn’t entirely understand.

Though Nim and Jonah are called to be together, neither is particularly inclined to fall in love with the other. Nim has lived a tough life and she has a cynical view of men, to say the least. Most of her interactions with them seem to involve the exchange of money and, while Jonah attracts her and she enjoys sparring with him, falling in love will be much more difficult. Jonah, on the other hand, has loved before. He had a wife he loved very much before the immortality granted by his talyan status caused him to outlive her. Jonah is a former missionary who struggles emotionally with his status as a demon-possessed talyan, as well as with the loss of his arm in a previous battle. Though called to Nim, he doesn’t particularly want to fall for a rude stripper who questions everything.

As you can tell from the plot summary, Nim and Jonah inhabit a complicated world. The worldbuilding in this novel, as with the entire series, is wonderful and holds together well. However, a reader really needs to start at the beginning with Forged of Shadows in order to understand this book. References are made to the “rules” of the talyans’ world, but the in-depth explanations from earlier books do not get repeated here. Readers instead find themselves dropped right into the action and into this world, which makes for an exciting read if you’re already familiar enough to know where you are.

To make things even more interesting, when Nim’s demon first came to her, she did not recognize it for what it was (not unusual) and when left the gift of an anklet, she pawned it. This makes her the first talyan to actually get rid of the demonic weapon left with her upon becoming possessed. So, in addition to adjusting to her new status and fighting demons, Nim and Jonah must try to find Nim’s weapon, which added a new twist to the series. Readers familiar with these books will get to spend time with characters from previous novels, but it’s not handled in an overly cutesy way. The talyan are too busy trying to survive and the story too streamlined for characters to make useless cameo appearances.

The one problem I had with the story had to do primarily with Nim and Jonah. Their conflict makes sense and their reasons for not immediately falling head-over-heels in love are quite plausible. However, even after it’s obvious that their physical attraction is very strong and that an emotional one has started building as well, they spend way too much time dancing around each other. There were times in the middle of the book where I just wanted to have a scene with the two of them locked in a small room and forced to talk. They really needed to clear the air between them rather than playing games and it took them entirely too long to figure that out.

Even so, Vowed in Shadows is a fun read overall and fans of the series will definitely enjoy the book. Nim is definitely not a faux ho, so she may be a little much for some readers to handle, but I enjoyed her in-your-face character, as well as watching her finally learn to trust people. The action will hold readers’ attention and, amidst the darkness of the story, the happy ending feels incredibly sweet.