This thread is for paranormal romance reviews.

Lil Marchette is a vampire who still believes in love. Never mind the fact that she's currently between paramours - and has been for quite some time - Lil is convinced that all vampires need love, and that she's just the person to help those who are having a little trouble in that department. Much to the chagrin of her father, who wants her to come work for him in the family business, Lil chooses to max out her credit cards setting up shop for her new match-making service, Dead End Dating.

The road to Happily Ever After is never simple, though, and even though Lil is intent on finding love for other vampires, her mother insists on setting her up on one blind date after another. To complicate things further, Lil meets Ty Bonner, a bounty hunter vamp who is quite the hottie. Unfortunately, as a born vamp, Lil isn't supposed to be interested in turned vampires since they can't procreate. Too bad Lil's heart never got that memo...

This book can best be described as Stephanie Plum meets Betsy Taylor. Lil Marchette is a vampire turned detective and those who enjoy the Betsy or Plum books might enjoy this. However, similarities to those other books aside, Dead End Dating is not without its flaws. Author Kimberly Raye could have benefited from an editor who insisted that the plot be tightened up. There are times during the story where the pacing seems too slow, and at times, stops altogether. Sometimes it feels like scenes are being dragged out so that Raye can meet her word count, not because the length of the scene enhances the story in any way. Similarly, there are some inconsistencies in some plot lines. For example, Lil says she is five-hundred years old, and she describes one of her first Dead End Dating customers as "a trillion years old," only to find out later in the story that the customer is only one-hundred and nineteen. Sure, it's a small nitpick, but it takes away from the story if the reader constantly questions what they are reading.

Raye succeeds in creating a vampire world that closely mirrors our own but has its own set of vampire rules. The dialogue is snappy and funny. How much a reader will enjoy this will most likely depend on how willing they are to overlook the book’s flaws. Dead End Dating is the first in a trilogy of Lil books, so there are some unresolved plot lines. The sequel, Dead and Dateless is scheduled for release in February 2007.

In Must Love Dragons, Stephanie Rowe continues a storyline begun in Date Me Baby, One More Time - specifically, the love affair between Theresa Nichols, the dragon Guardian, and Zeke Siccardi, the infamous ex-dragon-slayer.

Must Love Dragons picks up where Date Me Baby, One More Time left off. Justine and Derek have left for their honeymoon, and Theresa has been appointed the interim Guardian of Mona the goblet. Unfortunately, since a dragon wandering the streets of New York City would likely not go over well, Theresa is forced to survive on pretzels and whatever food Quincy, Derek’s brother, sends over - which rarely happens, since Quincy is as absent-minded as they come. To make matters worse, her cyber-sex partner, Zeke, is threatening to end their relationship if she continues to refuse to meet with him in person. Hungry and horny, Theresa makes a deal with the devil: a human body in return for a favor to be determined at a time most advantageous to Satan. Indebted to the devil, Theresa sets off to find food and Zeke, in that order. After all, she’ll need the nourishment if she’s going to live up to her cyber persona.

Zeke Siccardi is a reformed ex-dragon-slayer who’s gone zen. When he’s not meditating, he runs a private detective service, and he’s been hired to locate one Theresa Nichols. After building up a rapport with the woman he suspects is Nichols, he needs to meet her to be sure. Before he can lay eyes on her, however, he gets a visit from someone from his past looking to cash in on a life debt. What does the visitor want? A promise from Zeke that he will help slay a dragon believed to be living in New York City.

Fans of Date Me Baby, One More Time will mostly likely enjoy this sequel. The zany characters that populating Date Me Baby, One More Time all reappear in Must Love Dragons, and they’re just as much fun to read about the second time. While Dragons is a fast, fun read (depending on how much you liked the first novel), you might not like this one as much. At times, the jokes that seemed fresh and original the first time around fall flat. In general, the uniqueness of the world-building in Date Me Baby, One More Time, the things that made that book so different from everything else in this genre, is not as predominant in Must Love Dragons. All in all, while this is a good book, it just doesn’t quite meet the bar set by Date Me Baby, One More Time.

[The third book in this series, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Hot, will be released in Spring 2007.]

Susan Grant, best known for her futuristic 2176 series, kicks off this anthology with "Mortal In Mysteria," which features the demon responsible for founding the town of Mysteria. As the Demon High Lord of Self-Doubt and Second Thoughts, Damon committed a grave error in allowing the settlers of Mysteria to believe that they would be able to successfully settle a new town. When Satan finds out what Damon has done (some decades later), he banishes Damon from Hell, cursing him to spend eternity in the town he helped establish.

Catapulted from Hell, Damon finds himself in Harmony Faithfull's garden. As the local reverend, who has yet to make her mark on the town of Mysteria, Harmony is certain that bringing a naked man into her house - and her heart - will make the townspeople sit up and take notice.

MaryJanice Davidson's “Alone Wolf” is set in the same world as her Wyndham Werewolves series and takes place one year after the events in Derik's Bane. Cole Jones is a werewolf who grew up surrounded by humans. He knows he is different, but he's not sure how exactly to deal with it. Tired of using his size and stature to influence and intimidate bad people, Cole decides to relocate to Mysteria and purchases the first house he sees.

Charlene Houtenan, realtor extraordinaire, has been trying to sell the house Cole just bought for the past ten years. The fact that it's haunted probably has something to do with the lack of interest in the house. The fact that Cole seems not to be spooked by the house is reason enough for Charlene to be interested in him - she's always liked the different ones. But Charlene also has a hidden agenda when it comes to Cole. How will Cole react when he discovers the reason behind Charlene's quick interest in him?

“The Witches of Mysteria” by Gena Showalter features sisters Glory, Genevieve, and Godiva Tawdry. Genevieve is tired of the object of her affection - Hunter Knight - going out of his way to avoid her, when she's certain that he's just as attracted to her and she is to him. Genevieve enlists her sister Glory's help, in the form of Love Potion #13, to force Hunter to stop running away and take notice of her. Only her plan seems to work too well, and her silent plea to "let tonight be interesting" results in Genevieve getting way more than she bargained for.

The last selection in Mysteria is penned by P.C. Cast, author of the paranormal Goddess series. In “Candy Cox and the Big Bad (Were)Wolf,” Candy Cox, a middle-aged high school teacher, is approached by one of her former students, now all grown up. Justin Woods has been in love with Candy since he was in her class ten years ago. When he finds her on a jogging path incapacitated by a leg cramp, he decides that this is the opening he has been waiting for and asks her out on a date. Candy is hesitant, believing that Justin couldn't possibly be interested in a woman old enough to be his mother. Luckily, she agrees to meet him for a date and finds out just how interested Justin really is in her.

This quad of stories, while all set in the town of Mysteria, are each very different. The brevity of the Davidson piece works well given her trademark humor and dialogue style, while the Grant story reads more like single title offering. All four novellas are filled with fun, quirky characters who seem to highlight exactly what makes Mysteria such a crazy place to live. Additionally, the romance is well-done and varied in each story.

One note of caution to readers who picked this up because it was marketed as a loosely connected sequel to Bewitched, Bothered and Bevampyred, the multi-authored anthology to benefit victims of the tsunami in 2004: three of the four stories featured here were included in Bewitched, Bothered and Bevampyred. The stories have been expanded but are still pretty similar to the ones included in the previous anthology.

Dr. Fredrika Bell is a marine biologist who lives in Boston and works at the New England Aquarium. She’s also a mermaid, but she’s nothing like the mermaids fairy tales are made of. Fred (don’t call her Rika) isn’t blond, she’s not sweet and mercurial, and she doesn’t have a lobster sidekick. To date, her most difficult task is that the fish in the tank she’s in charge of are on a hunger strike.

When the new water fellow, Dr. Thomas Pearson, arrives at the aquarium to investigate some unusual toxicity levels, Fred is assigned to be his partner. Add to the mix Prince Artur of the Black Sea, sent to Boston to warn the bipeds against polluting the seas, and Fred finds herself torn between two very different men, both of whom are very interested in “getting to know” her. Love triangle aside, the trio must work together to discover who or what is causing the pollution in the harbor and stop it before it spreads any further.

That’s not to say, however, that the book is without its faults. At times it seems as though Davidson is so intent on coming up with the dialogue that she’s so well known for that the plot of the story falls by the wayside. For as short as Fishes was, (ignore the publisher’s page count, there are really only 268 pages of story) there’s really no excuse for the slow pacing in spots. Likewise, the margins on the actual printed page are quite large, making it seem at first glance like there’s more story here than there actually is.

Whether or not a reader will like Sleeping with the Fishes will most likely depend on the reader’s previous encounters with Davidson’s work. Newcomers to Davidson, however, may appreciate the opportunity to discover Davidson with a new series.

Nine-year-old Jana Jasper looks out of her bedroom window one night and spots a young boy encased in a glowing green bubble, stuck between the branches of the tree closest to her home. Intrigued and wanting to help, but unable to notify anyone in her family about him because of her muteness, Jana sneaks out of the house to rescue the boy. Safely on the ground, the two began a hesitant friendship. Believing the boy has magic, mute Jana likens him to a genie and makes two wishes, one of which is to be able to finally speak with ease. With a touch and a kiss the boy heals a scrape on Jana’s knee and gives her the gift of gab.

Twenty years later, Jana has overcome her muteness and, with her gift of gab, has become a California state senator. Unfortunately, her distinguished political family is being targeted in a smear campaign. On a supermarket run at the end of a long day to pick up some ice cream, Jana is approached by a man dressed like an action figure from the latest futuristic video game. The strange man declares that he, Cavin, is the same boy from the tree and has come to warn Jana of the intergalactic Coalition’s plans to invade Earth. Together Jana and Cavin must work to inform the U.S. government of the Coalition’s plans, figure out who is working to tarnish the Jasper family’s good name, and keep one step ahead of the humanoid REEF assassin. And if they can find the time in between saving the world, they just might fall in love.

This futuristic romance is the first in Susan Grant’s new series. While the setting of the book is very much like present day California, Cavin hails from another planet that is more technologically advanced. Despite Grant’s technology innovations, the story is straightforward and easy to read. Readers new to the genre won’t have to worry about getting bogged down or confused by fantastical or futuristic language. Beneath the futuristic setting, Your Planet or Mine? is a sweet romance featuring two people who forged a friendship as children and who, though various circumstances have kept them apart, have never forgotten each other.

The sequel to Your Planet or Mine?, My Favorite Earthling, is planned for release in March 2007.