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Posted by Grete, on February 12th, 2010 Sherrilyn Kenyon is one of the pioneers of supernatural romance. I’ve loved her work right from the first book I read and she remains one of my absolute favourite authors. Her characterisations and stories are amazing and I have no idea how she keeps the plotline running through 19+ books but she does and and the results are outstanding.
So what do you do when you have devoured everything she has written? Here are some recommendations for other authors in the same genre or with a similar style who I also love, and hopefully you might too!
J. R. Ward
Another author with a long running series, who has an amazing ability to bring her characters to life and into your hearts. Features vampires, hot men and sassy women, who could ask for more?
The following authors also write supernatural romance/urban fantasy but they are not quite as epic in scope as Sherrilyn Kenyon or J. R. Ward.
Keri Arthur
Keri Arthur’s ‘Riley Jensen’ Series are a great addition to the genre, with a gutsy, sexy heroine who is half-werewolf, half-vampire. The ‘Nikki and Michael’ vampire series has action as well as romance and the ‘Damask Circle Trilogy’ are definitely recommended reading too.
Patricia Briggs
For some werewolf love, Patricia Briggs brings the ‘Mercy Thompson’ Series to life and is an excellent, engaging, action packed read. Recently she has started on the ‘Alpha and Omega’ series from the same world, with two great characters who started out in a short story and are proving just as engaging. Lighter on the romance side than Kenyon but the story makes up for it.
Karen Chance
The ‘Cassie Palmer’ clairvoyant series has a bit of mystery going on, even with the numerous supernatural elements and makes for an exciting, sometimes heated mix. In addition to the main series, Karen Chance has recently begun a spin off series featuring the daughter of one of the main cast, which is shaping up to be a good read.
Kelley Armstrong
The ‘Otherworld’ series is going from strength to strength and Kelley Armstrong has a great way of telling stories through different character’s viewpoints. It starts with werewolves in Bitten and goes through several great characters who are witches, demons, sorcerors and necromancers. I love how she crosses their paths with other characters and often sets up the scene for following books as minor plots in the current one.
Rachel Caine
Two excellent series so far – ‘The Weather Wardens’ and their abilities to control the elements along with the enigmatic Djinn and her Young Adult series ‘The Morganville Vampires’. Both are excellent reads and highly recommended.
Kim Harrison
Witches, vampires, pixies oh my! The ‘Rachel Morgan’ series is a good solid read, inspired titles, humerous at times yet has its extremely poignant moments. Fast paced, full of action and definitely one to read.
Karen MacInerney
‘Tales of an Urban Werewolf’ are an easy, interesting and fun series to read. Doesn’t take itself too seriously but packs a punch when it needs to.
Carrie Vaughn
The brilliant ‘Kitty’ series (a misnomer since it’s about werewolves) just keeps getting better and Carrie Vaughn brings kick ass Kitty to life with style and panache.
If you have any other authors or books you feel would be enjoyed by people who loved Sherrilyn Kenyon, feel free to comment on this article with your recommendations.
Posted by Grete, on August 5th, 2009  I love authors who can create several series around a central theme, Keri Arthur’s being the Damask Circle Organisation.
Circle of fire is the first book in a new series and while similar to the Michael and Nikki books has all new characters except for a few appearances of the enigmatic Seline, who seems to run the Damask Circle.
It centres around Madeline Smith, a recluse whose gifts have driven her to refuse contact with anyone for fear of hurting them, and the mysterious Jon Barnett who manages to contact her out of the blue, needing urgent help. He’s investigating sixteen missing children, snatched from their homes in the night and twelve bodies found, each drained of blood, Jon knows something very old and evil is at work. Madeline is scared of leaving the house but when her beloved nephew is also snatched, she overcomes her fear, rescues Jon and they have a race against time to find the others before anyone else dies. What follows is also a sweet story of two damaged people falling in love and desperately wanting to believe in it, to trust, but fearing it’s probably the worst thing they could do.
Keri Arthur continues to intrigue me, she has such an easy style of writing but manages to produce a plot that sucks you in and keeps you reading. As I’ve said before in other reviews of her work, it’s the characters she creates that really make the book a cut above the rest. They are flawed, gifted, and emotional and you can identify with them so easily, you care about them almost from the first page.
I think Circle of Fire is more of a murder/mystery than the others have been, albeit in an urban fantasy setting and that appeals to the crime book lover in me also.
If you come to read this book and I do highly recommend it, I wonder if you will also go ‘noooo’ at the same point I did near the end. Do let me know!
With two more novels in this trilogy to come, I don’t know if they are with the same characters, but I still can’t wait to read them.
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Posted by Grete, on June 17th, 2009  Since Gabriel Stern has made it abundantly clear he neither wants nor needs Sam Ryan as a partner, she succeeds in being reassigned only to get a bodyguard detail. The downside is, the man she is assigned to isn’t the real person, he’s a clone and people linked to the base of Hopeworth keep dying. With confusing hints about her childhood and where she came from appearing at random intervals and the mysterious Joe Black who claims to be a friend but her senses say otherwise, will the truth finally come out? With her abilities continuing to develop at a rapid pace, Sam fears she is no longer human, if she even was to start with. All answers seem to lead back to the ex-military project known as Penumbra.
This is the third book in the Spook Squad series and it continues the story nicely. Sometimes in a series, each book stands alone with just the main characters linking them, but Keri Arthur has integrated the storyline seamlessly across the three books. As far as I can tell it was promoted as a trilogy but the story seems far from over. You get a lot of the answers you seek but it’s lacking aftermath and a few things like her attraction with Gabriel Stern are left unexplored. There is also one huge thing left to resolve but I won’t mention it here as it would be a major spoiler. Maybe that was the intention but it felt unfinished so I am hoping there are more books in the works. Again, the characters made the story for me, I love Sam and her ‘I can take care of myself’ attitude which she can even back up. I still want to smack Gabriel occasionally but he is getting easier to deal with, as emotions he has long had locked away start coming out. All three books have been very entertaining and as I said, I hope there will be more!
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Posted by Grete, on June 14th, 2009
Posted by Grete, on June 13th, 2009
Posted by Grete, on May 29th, 2009
Posted by Grete, on May 29th, 2009  Samantha Ryan is a Melbourne State cop that has no memory of her childhood or her parents, the only thing she has is a child’s drawing of a woman with ‘Mummy’ written underneath. Things start falling apart when her partner Jack, tries to kill her and weird things start happening around her… and to her. When Gabriel Stern, a shapechanger of the Special Investigations Unit gets involved, she realises there is more going on than a cop gone rogue and she is right in the middle of it.
I really like Keri Arthur’s work in general, it’s exciting, easy to read and she is very good at creating characters you love and care about. But after reading and being a bit disappointed with Deadly Desire, I picked this up fully expecting to feel the same way. It’s the first book in a new series and I have to say it was really good. Maybe the freshness of all new characters and settings helped but everything felt just right. The plot was pretty good, if a little twisty at times but the pace of answers being revealed was just right and kept you reading, trying to guess what was going on. I loved the main characters, Samantha being the one who stands out the most. Definately not a heroine who gets dropped in the deep end and flounders, waiting for the guy to come and save her. She can hold her own and I think that worked really well with the character of Gabriel who is alternately confused then impressed by her. The end of the book felt very unfinished so I really hope there is a second book in the works or I will be left forever wondering.
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Posted by Grete, on May 24th, 2009  Life is never normal for Riley Jensen. Being a rare hybrid of vampire and werewolf she often finds her dual natures at odds with each other, often wanting or needing different things.. or people. Add in her Guardian duties for the Directorate, a role which she never wanted in the first place and it fast becomes a pain in the ass. When strange murders of both humans and vampires start happening, it’s up to Riley to find out if there is a link and if so, to stop the killer. But how does the mysterious and annoying Kye Murphy fit into it. With the Moon’s heat rushing through her, can she focus enough to solve the murders before any more victims turn up.
This is the 6th Book in the Riley Jensen series and I have enjoyed the previous five a great deal. They are gritty, fast paced, exciting and also quite erotic at times. However, I’m not really sure what the problem is with this one. I found it hard to get into the flow of it, kept putting it down to do other things but I did persevere and it was worth it in the end. The plot was quite good, the characters consistent but it wasn’t really until the second half of the book when it finally engages you. It almost felt like Keri Arthur had grown a bit tired of the series and nearly produced a book by the numbers, the saving grace being that she does write very well and her characters are interesting and for the most part lead you to care about them.
As a ‘just OK’ book is the exception rather than the rule for Keri Arthur, I would definitely read the next one as I do want to find out how Riley adapts to the new changes in her life.
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Posted by Grete, on May 6th, 2009 It’s been a very booky couple of weeks here. They are a bit like buses…. none for ages then several come along at once!
A charity shop run, a car boot sale, a neighbour passing me some she’d finished with, and the rare event of finding a couple of books I wanted in WH Smiths made me a happy bookworm. Then my lovely husband Tony bought me a few I really wanted from Waterstones!
Anyway, here are the latest aquisitions :
The Strength of the Pack – Jorrie Spencer
Pack Challenge – Shelly Laurenston
The Wolf’s Heart – Jenna Leigh
Gallows View/A Dedicated Man – Peter Robinson
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death – M.C. Beaton
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet – M.C. Beaton
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener – M.C. Beaton
Carnival of Souls (Buffy) – Nancy Holder
Feotal Attraction/Girl’s Night Out – Kathy Lette
Mad Cows – Kathy Lette
Altar Ego – Kathy Lette
Deadly Desire – Keri Arthur
Chasing the Shadows – Keri Arthur
A Madness of Angels – Kate Griffin
Orcs : Bad Blood 1 – Stan Nicholls
Memory Zero – Keri Arthur
Dark Hunter Companion – Sherrilyn Kenyon with Alethea Kontis
Should keep me out of mischief for oooh a couple of days 
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Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.
Rosenbach, A. S. W.
About BookThing! BookThing! is a website where Grete can indulge her passion for books. There are reviews covering a range of genres (paranormal romance, crime, fantasy, romantic comedy), bibliographies for selected authors, features and sometimes the odd free book giveaway!
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