Book Review: Second Skin by Caitlin Kittredge

My rating: @@@

Finished Second Skin over the weekend. Finally.

I'm now invested in this series, so I was into it and relished the path. That being said, though, I'm noticing that in these kinds of genre series it's difficult to maintain the romantic/sexual tension of a relationship past the first or second book. Spoiler (highlight to read): Luna and Dmitri break up.

It's kind of like The Jewel of the Nile [Blu-ray], sequel to the hit movie Romancing the Stone [Blu-ray]. Episode one (Romancing the Stone): female and male meet under adventurous circumstances. She can save herself, but he is good to have around for backup ... and other things. Episode two (Jewel of the Nile): what happens after happily ever after? Those qualities which were so great in a danger situation can become problematic when these same people are dealing with the day to day mundanalities of life.

Luna and Dmitri are like that in this book. I suspect that the author couldn't take the angsty will-they-won't-they storyline any further and opted to cut her creative losses and move in another direction.

Luna's stubborn refusal to let other people in also felt like it went to a new level in this book but not in a good way. Think Anita Blake after about book 5 or 6 in the series. Still a likeable character with flaws, but her behaviour was extreme in a way sometimes that made her harder to relate to than in the previous books.

But I still enjoyed the book. And will buy the next one as soon as it comes out if I can. If you enjoyed the first two books in this series, I would recommend this one for your collection as well.

Buy Second Skin on Amazon.ca

Lists ...

Looking for something genre-related to read? What follows are a few of my favourite books ... in no particular order ...:

1. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
2. My Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
3. Burnt Offerings by Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
5. Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison

Bitten is the first book in the Women of the Otherworld series. It's my favourite.

My Silver Metal Lover is a stand-alone, although a sort-of sequel was released several years after this one.

Burnt Offerings is somewhere in the middle of the Anita Blake series. They're all good up to Narcissus in Chains; after that, they started losing their focus to become more of a crazy mass sex partner plus ick factor storyline and less of a kick-ass detective story line.

Dead Until Dark is the first of the Sookie Stackhouse supernatural mysteries. One of my favourite series - an easy, light read with a sense of humour. The later books seem to be losing their freshness a bit, but the first four are great and even the ones after that are readable.

Dead Witch Walking is the first in the Rachel Morgan series. I've really enjoyed every book in this series -- it isn't waning for me at all. The only one I wasn't crazy about was A Fistful of Charms ... but even that was well-written. It was just some elements of the subject matter that annoyed me.