'Fever' series by Karen Marie Moning

My rating- 5 stars overall

This review is for the entire 5 book series- spoiler free

The series runs in the following order- (all links lead to Goodreads.com for a full synopsis of each book)-
Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever



And here is my review:

WOW!
I'm so glad I got to read all these books one after the other- as each book ends on a cliffhanger and the waiting would've killed me! I LOVED this series!
I was in a daze the whole time I was reading these books. I was late for work for just trying to read "just one more page", and while I was at work I was in a daydream the whole time thinking about the books- probably with a goofy grin on my face. I even considered cancelling evening plans because I was so desperate to just get home and pick the book up again. THAT'S how much this story caught me up- I haven't been this lost in a series in such a long time. The emotions that it stirs up... I was crying, I was angry, I was in love, frustrated, tense, exhilerated...

I wouldn't recommend this series to everybody- I can quite understand how it is not everyone's cup of tea and there are some quite rough parts in it. But to me- the traumatic parts of the story just made it all the better. It made the feelings of anger and despair that it stirred up so much more intense. It is a dark story, and scary, but also full of revelations and surprises, and a love triangle or two.

So what's it all about? In a nutshell-
MacKayla (Mac for short) travels to Ireland when her sister who was studying there is brutally murdered, hoping to put pressure on the police investigation. Instead, she discovers that she is a sidhe-seer- she can see the fae that walk around glamoured as humans, and has stumbled into a dangerous war between unwitting humans and creatures of the night. When she meets Barrons at his bookstore (ah Barrons, the reason behind the goofy look on my face!) she is guided even deeper into the world that killed her sister. Pink-clad, girly Mac has to quickly grow up, learn to stand up for herself, and learn to fight the fae before the veil between the worlds is broken and Dublin is over-run. Throughout she invents quirky names for all that she sees, which soon become catchy- like naming the fae objects of power the OOPs, and the fae with horns the "rhino-boys". They have to hunt down a powerful book, the Sinsar Dubh, which contains all the old spells to remake the world. It is also so evil that it may corrupt anyone who approaches it.

Should she trust Barrons who is always so angry and secretive or V'lane the sexy Seelie fae prince who promises to help her? Also, in the mix are a group of militant sidhe-seer women, and gorgeous Christian MacKeltar working for the druids against the Unseelie fae. Everyone wants to use Mac's abilities for their own agendas, and it is difficult to know who to trust. Despite this Mac tries to keep an alliance of some sort with everyone, and try to use them to her advantage as well, keeping everyone at a distance until she can figure out who to trust.

Mac is such a great heroine because she is your normal, average, everygirl who is flung into this terrifying world and left to accept/cope with it as best she can. She starts off as a blonde, girly girl who has never been anywhere, or had any real ambitions, and wants nothing more than to lie in the sun with a book, earn enough money to keep her in nail polish, maybe settle down and get married one day and have babies. We see her gradually transform into a tough, fiercely independent person with a strong will, but with a witty sense of humour, which made me laugh, especially when bantering with Barrons- a difficult man for anyone to stand their ground with.

Barrons is not your typical male hero at all. He is domineering, hard, cold, a little terrifying at times, and will

never back down or shy away from speaking the harsh truth. His language will turn the air blue. He can be quite cruel to Mac at times, and very hard on her "for her own good". But he still had me swooning even if a lot of the time I wanted to either hide away from him or punch him! (To see why visit Nic's Barrons post over at Irresistable Reads).

This story is dark, sexy, magical, gripping, edge-of-your-seat, action-packed and absolutely fantastic! It's also very addictive- once I started I couldn't put it down! I'm a little sorry the series has ended- what will grip my every waking minute now? Maybe it's a good thing that I've finished this series- I can start to come back down to Earth and back down to reality again... on second thoughts, who needs reality? I'm going to re-read all my favourite parts of the series again...!