Race the Darkness

by Abbie Roads

I am so far from a devotee to paranormal romance that even I questioned why I was picking this one up…and then I read the blurb again. Ah, that’s why! This just had work of genius stamped all over it from the blurb on and it never let up for a single moment!

Xander Stone, isn’t your run of the mill criminal investigator, in fact there is nothing run of the mill about him at all, the guy is exceptional in everything he does. But please don’t think, oh that’s great I am really going to love this guy because whilst you might (in some respects) …I warn you now, he takes a lot of loving, he has a past that is almost as dark and brooding as he is and he is definitely a doesn’t play well with others type of guy!

Struck by lightning as a child it has left him not only physically wearing the scars of that encounter but also with an ability that he doesn’t exactly embrace most of the time …mind you I’m not sure how I would handle being able to hear the private thoughts and musings of those around me. I could almost understand why he found his solace at the bottom of a bottle most nights, must be hard to hear a cry for help when you are totally blitzed!

But no matter how hard he may wish things were different, they aren’t and in this story it all comes to a head so to speak.

For years Xander has heard one particular voice, one particular cry for help that he has always ignored, never truly believing that whoever this woman was that was speaking to him, pleading with him to save her was real but when he finds himself in a beaten up trailer, looking upon the almost skeletal frames of two women, he may just have to rethink that theory because one of those women is Isleen Walker, the voice he has been hearing for years and she is as physically close to deaths door as it is possible to be and I am sure that for her, after 8 years of pure hell, death would have been a mercy or so she thought, up until the man she has been dreaming about ( and I say that literally- read it and you will see what I mean) is before her and ready to rescue her.

Isleen had her own gift and from the minute they set eyes on each other it was as if their screwed up worlds had finally collided to create a perfect storm, they were magical together and as much as Xander was committed to keeping her safe neither of them had any idea just how far they may have to go to keep that promise. There were forces in the background that were ready to wreak havoc and for Isleen and in return Xander, it meant that neither of them was safe.

I think I found the level of crazy that they had not only already been through but continued to struggle with almost exhausting, I wanted them to be able to take stock and just breath but it was so full on that at times, I found I had to put the book down and step away just to calm myself down, I had no idea what corner they were going to turn next and what heartache was going to be staring them in the face when they did.

I said at the start that I am not a devotee of paranormal romance I think that still stands but this didn’t feel like a paranormal story. My mind was screaming at me that this was dark romance (boy was it!) , perhaps different from some of the others I have read but no less engaging, no less unnerving and certainly equally as entertaining.

While the main characters had enhanced powers etc. I didn’t find that it was that aspect of them that kept me intrigued, it was all of them that held my attention, this was about a supremely strong woman who survived more than many could ever imagine and emerged stronger than any one human had the right to be and the man that had the strength to stand beside her.

Highly engaging and an enlightening joy, crazy as this may seem I hold my hands up and will admit that I loved it.