DARKEST INTENTIONS by S.K. Yule reveals good intentions, but fails to meet its potential. The excessive and explicit sex scenes dominate the novel, while the overall series plotline is only really advanced in the epilogue. I hope that the next book in the Darkest series focuses mainly on the overall series plotline.
DARKEST INTENTIONS tells the story of how hunter Malachi Mannering, a one thousand year-old vampire, falls in love with his viata amant, or soul mate, Geri Baxter, a CPA recently divorced from Colorado's governor. Malachi comes upon Geri as she is attacked in a city park by a shadow drifter, a vampire that has sold his soul to Satan and become pure evil.
After Malachi saves Geri from the drifter, he then saves her from homelessness by giving her a temporary place to stay, but before they can discuss finding her a permanent solution, Ashe Aleksandrov calls and requests Malachi's help with the drifter uprising in St. Louis. The road to Malachi and Geri's happy ending is long and drawn out, and each must face their own nemesis in order to be free to love each other.
This third installment in the Darkest books showed some promise, but by the end of the book, I couldn't wait for it to be over. There is minimal character development, and given the lives of the protagonists, there was ample material for illustration. The overall series plotline regarding the drifter uprising was not concluded, and it was only slightly advanced in the epilogue. The book leaves the reader with the belief that there will be a fourth book.
DARKEST INTENTIONS also presents the same technical issues as the first two books in the series – grammatical errors and poor sentence construction, in addition to repetitive narration and repetitive and contrived dialogue. At some point about halfway through the novel, the protagonists' interactions become completely unbelievable.
Additionally, the number of pages devoted to sexual content is exponentially more in this book than in either of the first two. The protagonists' relationship follows the general template laid out in the first two books, and as in the first two books, the sex scenes become unnecessary, redundant, and downright boring. In addition to the typical M/F sexual encounters, this book deals with some serious sexual abuse issues and can be rather disturbing and painful to read at times. The book also touches on PTSD-like domestic violence as well as homosexual relations. If you are sensitive to these issues, beware. The heat level rating on this book is a 4, which is sad because the sexual encounters completely overshadow the fresh and interesting overall series plotline. I would have much preferred the ink spent on the sex scenes be used to advance the overall series plotline regarding the drifter uprising and the ancient vampire sibling warfare.
Overall, I did not enjoy DARKEST INTENTIONS, and can only hope that if there is a fourth novel in this series, the majority of the book will be focused on the substantive plotline instead of gratuitous sex scenes.
*Original review revised for The Romance Reviews.com at http://erotic.theromancereviews.com/viewbooksreview.php?bookid=9279
