Book Review: Slay by Laurell K. Hamilton

 

Book Description

Laurell K. Hamilton has captivated readers with her gritty, seductive tales of vampire hunter Anita Blake for thirty bloody fantastic years. Now, in the thirtieth novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, wedding bells are ringing. But before Anita can make it to the altar, she must face an obstacle more daunting than any supernatural threat....

Necromancer Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: U.S. Marshal—Preternatural Branch. She’s faced horrifying monsters and brutal killers and come out the other side still standing.

 

Considering how things in her life tend to go, Anita never expected her walk down the aisle with Jean-Claude to go smoothly. They’ve already been confronted with naysayers and a power-hungry ancient evil, but now Anita has to do the one thing that actually scares her: introduce her very religious, very human relatives to her fiancé—the newly crowned vampire king of America.

 

As Anita tries to keep the peace between the family she left behind and the family she’s chosen, dark forces jump at the chance to take advantage of the chaos. With her happy-ever-after at risk and everyone’s immortal souls hanging in the balance, Anita grapples with a hard truth: Blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family.

My Review

After reading the last book, Smolder, I was hoping that this book would give us a little more insight into the big bad that we met in that book and fortunately we find out who it is and what they want. The big bad being Deimos is behind the attacks on Anita and her people. Anita's family is set to come to town to meet Jean-Claude, be fitted for her wedding and to see if her father will give her away at her wedding since he and the rest of the family are very religious and don't like the fact that she's marrying a vampire. Her father and grandmother were really awful but her father at least seemed to chill out a little by the end of the book. Her grandmother on the other hand was just plain terrible and I can't say one good thing about the woman. Although we did learn a secret about her that was not explored at at. Like, why bring up this big secret if we aren't going to find out more about it? That made no sense. 

By the end of this book we were really no closer to the wedding which I was hoping would happen or at least try to happen. But we do find out about the plan that Deimos has hatched and it's a very well thought out one that includes some of Anita and Jean-Claude's people actually betraying them which I found to be exciting when it was revealed who it was. Plus the fact that Deimos is not just a vampire, no he has other abilities which made him a very strong adversary. It was nice to see a big bad be able to over power Anita and some of her people for once because usually she and Jean-Claude are very powerful and they quickly overcome whatever is thrown at them, but not this time and that made this book exciting. 

There was a lot of action, danger, and family drama in this book so I was always engaged and excited to see what would happen next. I've been a long time fan of this series and enjoyed this book but am really looking forward to finally seeing Anita and Jean-Claude get married. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.