Book Review: Living Nightmare by Shannon K. Butcher

I don’t want to go into too much detail on this review for a couple reasons. Mostly because I received it as an ARC, and since it’s a new release, I’ll try not to put spoilers in my review.

Soo…that being said, I really had a hard time putting this book down.
It was jam packed with a ton of action. It began with Nika trying to dig up the bones of her sister Tori. Tori was taken by the s’gath demons the night Nika was infected by the demons. Nika has a tenuous telepathic connection with her younger sister, but since she’s still weak, and since her mind is shared by the s’gath demons who ingested her blood, her mind talents are potentially strong, but not quite strong enough to help her sister or to stay out of the s’gath minds. They can call her and use her intelligence to help them hunt. Madoc grabs her and saves her from freezing her butt off, and she in turn helps him out-I won’t tell how! (he he ::evil laugh!::)

Madoc has been avoiding Nika, but he’s been trying to do 2 things: 1. destroy as many of the demons as he can to give Nika slivers of her mind back. And 2. his last leaf has fallen from his tree and his soul will die soon, so he’s trying to hide that. He’s had a few leaves tattooed back on his bare tree, and he has a magical ring that will slow the descent of his last leaf.

Well, I won’t spoil what else that ring is doing to Madoc, but it’s great when Nika takes it off him.

I’m really super intrigued as to what will happen with a bunch of the characters we’ve been introduced to, and I was so surprised at what Gilda did (she did a lot of things that even in theory weren’t good ideas! Wow, for being a leader, she’s got some dark secrets). The lifting of the vow so her daughters will grow up was well done and sad at the same time. I wonder what will happen with Maura and Sibyl?

I got irritated a lot with the shifting points of view-it got annoying to get every single character’s pov. Andra and Paul’s little bit was unnecessary. it could have been done differently, but it was nice to “see” previous characters. I got incredibly intrigued at what the Sanguinar (vampires) are doing by playing matchmaker with people who are compatible enough to have a baby of the Sentinel’s kind. From what I can gather the Sanguinar are slowly starving to death. I’m not sure why they don’t take human blood, but they are hungry, constantly weak and when they do get Theronai blood, they are more powerful.

Moving on, Nika and Madoc are a great pair, and I loved watching Nika pursue him. I just wanted to smack Madoc in the back of the head for ignoring the obvious. But, I hated how they were for the second half of the book. They weren’t as close as I’d hoped and Nika became fixated on saving Tori. I get that she had been already, and that it needed to be done, but she wasn’t strong enough nor was she thinking with her head. It drove me nuts. I hate seeing characters ignore common sense.

I liked the ending, even though it was slightly open-ended, and I am super excited for the next book. It’s about Logan, a Sanguinar.

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