Hearts of Darkness by Kira Brady Review

Kayla Friday’s life dramatically changed the day she arrived in Seattle Washington to identify her sister’s body at the morgue. Within minutes, she is thrust into a world of paranormals who are looking for a necklace that was in her sister’s possession. Without a clue to what is going on, Kayla clings to a man named Hart who she meets at the morgue, to help her.  The only problem is, Hart’s job is to recover that necklace by any means possible and helping Kayla is just a ruse to get his hands on it.  Also she’s pretty sexy and he wouldn’t mind getting her into bed.

As Kayla tries to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, her attraction for Hart grows more and more every day. But little does she know another man has his eyes set on her, and he plans to make her his next prized possession.  Will Kayla find the necklace and make it home safe or will her trip to Seattle be her last?

Hearts of Darkness is the first book in the Deadglass Series by debut author Kira Brady.  At first I had trouble getting into this story right from the beginning.  Kayla’s sister’s dead body is set on fire in front of her and a couple pages later, she grabs onto a perfect stranger named Hart and starts kissing him.  My jaw actually dropped when Kayla started checking out Hart and did this. How could you think about a man, how could you be attracted to a man, after just seeing your dead sister in a morgue and watching her body burn? And you react by kissing a stranger?? Ok.

The romance between Hart and Kayla was not enjoyable for me because it never had time to develop. They kiss in Chapter 3 before they’ve even gotten to know each other at all. This ruined the chase for me. You know when one person in a romance novel is chasing after another and they don’t know if the other really likes them or not? Well we didn’t have any of that.  We knew from the very beginning that Hart wanted to screw Kayla, and we knew Kayla although supposedly a virgin, was QUICK to jump into bed with the first man she meets in Seattle.

The word ‘’Lady’’ is used over and over and over in this story instead of God.  The Lady is one of their Gods and they say her name constantly.  I had no idea who this Lady is but eventually it was sort of explained. I started counting at one point how many times Lady is used. After 15 times, I stopped counting.

The world that Kayla was in was already built for me as it is practically identical to Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series world, so I didn’t have trouble picturing it.  At times I got confused because of the extreme similarities between the two series.  In both series the main character is traveling far to a place where their sister was studying, was found dead/possibly murdered, had a secret boyfriend, and was living in a place that was overrun by paranormal beings that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. In both series the main character clings on to the first man she meets.  In the Fever Series, Barron; In Deadglass, Hart.  There are numerous more similarities but they would create spoilers for both series so I won’t mention them.

I had extremely high hopes for Hearts of Darkness when I heard it’s comparable to KMM’s series.  I didn’t think the comparison was because of near identical plots.  I assumed it would be because of the writing or some other aspect.  After having read a lot of urban fantasy novels, (I don’t know why this is classified as paranormal romance) this story just doesn’t feel unique to me.  I feel like I’ve read it before, too many times.

Despite all of my complaints, I WILL be continuing on with this series to see if it will develop more. It did have a fast pace and the action was enjoyable.  Unfortunately, the negatives still outweigh the positives with Hearts of Darkness.  

                                          MY RATING: