Better off Undead (The Bloodhound Files 4) by DD Barant

Like i promised you, here comes the second review of the day after the ghosts, we go back to werewolves and vampires with a golems' touch.

You have learned this month that i really love this series however i must admit that not all the books gave me the same pleasure. So i will let you make your own opinion on it.

Enjoy!

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication: 2011

ISBN:  0312545053

Genre: urban fantasy, romance, suspense
Violence: strong
Langage: normal
sex: mild
Public: 18+

Source: bought

Short description from goodreads :

 Dark magic, unknown enemies, monsters of every stripe—FBI profiler Jace Valchek has seen it all. In this bizarre parallel universe, shape-shifting werewolves and blood-thirsty vampires don’t even warrant a raised eyebrow. That is, until Jace has to face what life might look like as one of them …

It starts off as just another run-of-the-mill assignment: to track down the rogue don of a mafia werewolf family before he upsets the delicate balance of the underworld. But Jace wasn’t counting on being bitten…and soon she’s fighting the growing wolf inside her with a startling antidote—vampirism. Stopping a bloody gangland war won’t be easy when Jace is feeling some new, and very inhuman, desires …

My opinion:

          I really love this series but this book kind of disappointed me. The rhythm is still rapid, the action well described, the plot and investigation well written but the humour was not as present as in the first book while the romance is put up front.

Jace wants to help doctor Pete and still feeling guilty for what happened because of that she isn’t as cautious as she was in the first book ( and it was already quite a lot to say^^). Then when she is infected she is acting even more out of character though it’s normal, believable and really well written. I enjoyed seeing her when she struggles with new instincts and senses. However as she does her job she doesn’t see immediately who is behind, she doesn’t try to see the problem in global point of view when normally she is keener on discerning manipulations and such thanks to her profession. It bothered me a little.

The whole mob of werewolves is interesting and we get to see a bit more how it works however even there she is not at her best and since the first part happens before her infection that’s not an excuse. For the first time she is fighting to stay human and taking a lot of risks with that, it was a good way to go deeper in her psyche to have a glimpse of her vulnerability and all but it was done by sacrificing the humour presents in the first 3 books that lightened the atmosphere. This book is darker than the other so far.

While this book is all about Jace and her new problem, we also get to see a new side of Cassius and about his past. We also learn a bit more about the human enclave only cited before. We discover that their world is as bad as ours with their own kind of traffic of living beings. Charlie and Jace have a great partnership and it works better than before even if for protecting the other one has to lie sometimes. Finally too, Jace starts a relationship but until she had her mind on it she wasn’t suspecting anything.  Galahad is still there, cuter and s loyal, as well as the other secondary characters

It ‘s a good in a whole and i’m really curious about the next one, DD Barant keeps surprising me i just hope i will find again the same felling with book 5 that did with book 1-3.

Really a good series of urban fantasy with a lot of suspense and action in a universes complex but  described in a master’s way.

Score:  3,5/5

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own and no compensation was received in exchange for this review

Challenges:

Book read for the 2012 TBR reading

 

This book enter in the Romance and Me Challenge