Darkfever By Karen Marie Moning

Description from the back of the book:

""My philosophy is pretty simple-any day nobody’s
trying to kill me is a good day in my book.
I haven’t had many good days lately."

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman.

Or so she thinks... until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae..."

Overall the club liked this book and most of us will continue to read the books in the series. Moning does a great job building tension (both sexual and otherwise) between the various characters, and the story is so vivid and clear through the protagonist, Mac's eyes it's easy to imagine extraordinary evens actually taking place. There were also many comparisons between the main character and narrator of these books and Sookie Stackhouse from Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampire Mysteries". Both women are southern, from small towns, very girlie, and work in a bar. Fans of Harris' series would likely enjoy this series.
The main complaint about the book is that in and of it's self it offers little, other than a slow, but interesting start to a much bigger story. As a stand alone book, it's terrible, giving the reader no answers or return on their invested time and money in the book. As part of a series, it's intriguing. When authors do this it really bothers me. I understand you've got a bigger story to tell, but at least give me SOME closure and answers to the questions that have come up over the 250 pages of the novel.

On the plus side, it does appear the author knows where she's going with the series and hopefully will have less inconsistencies than other series that perhaps were not as preplanned to be a series.

Bottom line: If you're ready fora new series, Darkfever and the rest of the "Fever series" are a fun and intriguing read. If you're not interested in investing that much time to get answers, don't read the first one, you'll just be frustrated.