Goldilox and the Three Weres: Early Review: Biting Bad by Chloe Neill

Biting Bad
(Chicagoland Vampires #8)
Chloe Neill
Release: August 6, 2013
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Merit has been a vampire for only a short while, but she’s already seen a lifetime’s worth of trouble. She and her Master, centuries-old Ethan Sullivan, have risked their lives time and again to save the city they love. But not all of Chicago is loving them back.

Anti-vampire riots are erupting all over town, striking vampires where it hurts the most. A splinter group armed with Molotov cocktails and deep-seated hate is intent on clearing the fanged from the Windy City come hell or high water.

Merit and her allies rush to figure out who’s behind the attacks, who will be targeted next, and whether there’s any way to stop the wanton destruction. The battle for Chicago is just beginning, and Merit is running out of time.

This review is part of the Biting Bad blog tour!

Review:

The gang's all here in this eighth installment in the Chicagoland Vampires series. Everyone plays an important role at some point in this book, including Merit's grandfather, Mallory, and Jeff Christopher. While Merit and Ethan can certainly carry a story all by themselves, its nice when a series has a host of side characters that can shine as well. Biting Bad is another fun book in this series that I can highly recommend.

In this one, McKetrick is back and as obnoxious as ever. Merit and the gang suspect he might be behind a string of anti-vampire crimes, but at the very least he's benefitting from them by building support for his anti-vampire politics. McKetrick is a great 'bad guy', a combination between ex-military badass and tricky politician. I enjoyed the plot of the riots and trying to figure out who was behind them, although it definitely wasn't my favorite plot from this series.

Merit and Ethan are...gasp!...a real couple here. I'm serious people. They don't break up the entire book. It was extremely refreshing to finally get a book without all the back and forth, will they or won't they. We kind of saw this in the previous book, but there was still a lot of secrets and uncertainty in that one. Here, they are a partnership. Darth Sullivan is just as romantic and grandiose as ever and the ways that he makes Merit swoon throughout this one are awesome! I loved seeing them work as a team, even including Merit's Red Guard partner Jonah in several steps in the investigation.

Something notable about this book is the uneven spread of action and excitement, something I've noticed in the last few CLV books. The first third is often a bit slow, with a lot of reminding us who everyone is and what happened in the most recent book. The stage is being set. Then, after that one-third, things really start to pick up and become exciting and fast paced. This is true for Biting Bad as well. But, once things got going they really took off. I especially loved the twist things took toward the end when we learned what was really going on. I hope to see this twist more in future books because I really enjoyed the brief questions it led both Merit and other to ask themselves.

The ending of this book perfectly sets up the next in the series, Wild Things, which releases in February. Its looks like we'll get to see more of the shifters in the next one, which I'm always excited to read about!

Recommended for fans of: vampire urban fantasy, series with great side characters, katanas, swoon worth vampires, and kick ass chicks.

This review is based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.