Title: Kiss of Snow
Author: Nalini Singh
Series: Book 10 in the Psy-Changeling Series
Release Date: 1st June 2011
Publishers: Hachette Au

Check it out: Goodreads | Book Depository

Book Description: Nalini Singh’s exhilarating world of shapeshifters and psychics is back.

Since the moment of her defection from the PsyNet and into the SnowDancer wolf pack, Sienna Lauren has had one weakness. Hawke. Alpha and dangerous, he compels her to madness.

Hawke is used to walking alone, having lost the woman who would’ve been his mate long ago. But Sienna fascinates him, even as he tells himself she is far too young to handle the wild fury of the wolf. Then Sienna changes the rules and suddenly, there is no more distance, only the most intimate of battles between two people who were never meant to meet. Yet as they strip away each other’s secrets in a storm of raw emotion, they must also ready themselves for a far more vicious fight…

A deadly enemy is out to destroy SnowDancer, striking at everything they hold dear, but it is Sienna’s darkest secret that may yet savage the pack that is her home and the alpha who is its heartbeat…

Reviewed by Fran: This latest in the Psy-Changling series from Nalini Singh is Hawke and Sienna’s story. We’ve met this couple in previous books and have seen the simmering attraction between them, the stumbling block being Hawkes reluctance to admit to his feelings for Sienna due to her young age and the fact that when he was a young boy his mate died and since then he has shut himself off, concentrating on being the Alpha of the Snow Dancer pack. He feels she is better off with a younger member of the pack and Sienna enjoys ‘pushing his buttons’ by flaunting the fact that other young men from the pack are attracted to her. Sienna came into the pack seeking refuge from the Psy-net with members of her family and has worked hard to control her ‘power’ of being an X-Psy ( X from the latin word ‘exardesco’ meaning ‘to blaze up’). The X-Psy are the assassins of the Psy net with their ability to ‘burn up’ their targets, leaving a pile of smoking ashes behind, as happened when Sienna as a young child ‘burned’ her mother when her powers first came into being as a young 5 yr old! Being in a highly emotional state brings out her powers to a ‘supernova’ state and initially Sienna has managed to bring her ability under control , but with the Snow Dancer pack under attack from forces intent on destroying it and the fear that her ability is spiraling out of control she fears hurting the very people who have given sanctuary to her and her family before she dies as she has grown up believing she will at the young age of 25!. After an episode where she and Judd go on a mission for the defense of the pack as a scouting party due to the Snow Dancer pack being under attack and injures herself in the process, Hawke realises that if she’s old enough to choose to defend the pack, she is old enough to know who she chooses as a mate and finally admits to his feelings for her. It’s not until this latest battle is won that they can finally indulge their feelings for each other and build a future for themselves and the pack giving us some sexy, sweet and enthralling moments in the telling of their story.

Nalini doesn’t disappoint with this latest addition to her psy-changling series, it contains all the things I’ve come to know and love with her books and can’t wait for the next in this series.

About the Author: Nalini Singh was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. She spent three years living and working in Japan and traveling around Asia before returning to New Zealand – although she’s always plotting new trips. She has worked as a lawyer, a librarian, a candy factory general hand, a bank temp and an English teacher, not necessarily in that order. Some people might call that inconsistency, but she calls it grist for the writer’s mill.

The Psy-Changling Series in reading order:

1. Slave to Sensation
2. Visions of Heat
3. Caressed By Ice
4. Mine to Possess
5. Hostage to Pleasure
6. Branded by Fire
7. Blaze of Memory
8. Bonds of Justice
9. Play of Passion
10. Kiss of Snow

Have you read this book? What did you think? Leave me a comment below :)

Author’s Website

Book Summary: New name, new town, new life. Nastasya has done it too often to count. And there’s no end in sight. Nothing ever really ends… when you’re immortal. But this time is different: Nastasya knows that this new town must hold her salvation—or her death.

Nastasya was born into darkness, and has embraced it her whole life. Four hundred years ago, a tragedy robbed her of her birthright, and she’s been living a lie ever since. Now, four centuries of exploring the depths and limits of dark power has left Nastasya feeling sickened unto death. If she continues down this road, she will end up as a very dark, twisted, evil thing—with unthinkable power. Or she can begin the long, painful road toward light, and reclaim the destiny that others tried to destroy.

They’re rare. You may have never met one, never sat next to one on a plane, never eaten in the same restaurant at the same time. But the Immortals are there. Have always been there. Will always be there. Moving among humans, playing out their own cursed fate. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with huge, sweeping implications for mankind. But no one will ever know. Except you.

Nas and her friends Incy, Cicely,Boz and Katy are all immortals who have been drifting through life having fun with no responsibility, that is until one night after a disagreement with a cab driver Incy breaks his spine using magick and then goes on ‘niteclubbing’ without a second thought leaving the cabbie in the gutter in pain. Nas starts to question her life and the actions of her friends, remembering an incident in the 1920′s where after a hair-raising car ride/accident in which a girl is killed and another injured (both who weren’t immortal), she meets a women- River, who is immortal and who offers her a place to stay if she ever finds a need to find purpose in her life away from her friends. It is to this place that Nas flees the next day leaving her friends behind, using a false passport and ID that not even her friends know about. She arrives at Rivers farm which turns out to be a rehab facility of sorts for immortals, meeting one guy Reyn who she immediately feels a connection to and who seems vaguely familiar but she can’t place where she knows him. She leaves the next day as Reyn points out that she doesn’t belong, only to return as the further she gets from the farm the more uneasy she feels. She realises the farm and the people there give her the first sense of peace she has felt in all her 459 years of life, at least since she was ten when her family were all killed by a raiding party. She meets people who she begins to care about in her own way as for centuries she has never formed any attachments to anyone, preferring to just ‘party’ her way through life without a thought or care.

Whilst she is at the farm she participates in magick circles which cause her to remember different times in her life and the losses she has suffered. It is during one of the rituals that she remembers who Reyn is and the role he played in the death of her family, which she finds hard as she is still attracted to him leading to an episode in the barn where they both admit their feelings for each other. Whilst at the farm River tells her that Incy is trying to find her using magick but they have ‘spelled’ guards around her so that she will remain invisible to him until she is ready to talk to him, which she agrees having “seen” in one of the circle ceremonies an incident where Incy and friends seemingly deliberately caused the death of two young men through their reckless behaviour and another episode where Incy after ‘trashing’ his hotel room admits to the others that he needs to be with Nes so he can take advantage of her power, a power that whilst Nas was with them she was unaware of the full potential of. River and the other teachers help Nas acccept her heritage and develop her powers as the last descendant of the House of Ulfur, which is one of eight magickal ‘houses’ that have just about been destroyed by raiding parties intent on gaining the power for themselves.”

I found this an easy read and an easy story to follow with just the right amount of suspense/romance and magic to satisfy me!. It is part of a trilogy with the next one coming out in 2011. Do yourself a favour and start reading!

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