Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Mac (MacKayla) Lane was looking forward to some downtime by the pool when she received devastating news: her sister, Alina, is dead. She'd been living in Ireland attending an overseas school program when her body was discovered in an alley. Mac's grief is almost too much to bear especially when she realizes that her sister left her a strange voicemail just moments before her murder. Mac knows that the locals have all but given up on the case and decides that she must travel to Ireland herself to present the new evidence. While she's there, she intends to find out what was going on with Alina and try to unmask the killer herself. 

But Mac discovers something surprising when she arrives: she and her sister share a gift - a piece of their heritage they were previously unaware of. This gift awakens on the Emerald Isle and Mac realizes there are things around her she could never have imagined. 

I know that this series by Karen Marie Moning is pretty massively popular, so I'm not sure how I missed it for this long. I have to say I pretty much loved it!

I loved how dark the story was at times. In fact, my only real complaint was that it didn't maintain that level of darkness throughout. Just a personal preference as I really do enjoy quite dark tales.

Mac is snarky and funny and her level of sarcasm does lighten things up quite a bit. As a character she's a lot of fun, stubbornness and all.

And of course this first outing has a pretty big cliffhanger of an ending, which pretty much guarantees you'll be running out to get the second installment as soon as you can (which, of course, I did - I just haven't had a chance to read it yet. Argh!).

I like that Moning has a little something for everyone here. The fae are creepy! The setting for the story is enchanting, to be sure, and leaves a lot of room for the weirdness and magic of the fae world. I mean, c'mon, anyone who's been to Ireland would pretty much feel the same way. It's easy to believe there are otherworldly creatures lurking around the corners. And while Darkfever is technically paranormal romance, Moning balances the story quite well with a lot of action, suspense, and a bit of mystery. I'm sure the romance aspects probably get played up further in subsequent installments - there's really not a whole lot of room for it in this introductory book anyway.

I'm prepared to binge read this series if I have the chance. I currently have all of the books in hand (with the exception of the new first in the connected series). They are:

Darkfever
Bloodfever
Faefever
Dreamfever
Shadowfever

Iced

Rating: 4/5