Blood Cross: Jane Yellowrock, Book 2

Jane Yellowrock is like that girlfriend you have that is totally great in every aspect of her life except men. She is totally badass and I love the skinwalking aspect of her with Beast. It is a really cool concept and her being Native American really fits in with the mystery and history to her character but she is totally clueless when it comes to men. *** For a gal who had been out of circulation for a few years, I was getting a lot of attention. Too bad they were cop, blood-servant, and angry vamp. I’d be lucky to survive. ***Normally this would be a dealbreaker for me. But I like just about everything else about Jane that I’m going to let it go for now…but well will discuss it later in the review. Jane is still in New Orleans hunting the rogue vampire that seems to making young vampires with no training. Leo in the throws of a vampire depression of sorts wants to kill her and her witchy woman friend has come to visit with the kids. Jane has her hands full at the moment.Let’s just say that I totally love Molly and the cutest little witch ever Angelina. I hope we get a lot more of them in the next books too. I do like that Jane has something resembling a family in them.The plot is pretty good. Jane needs to find the feral vamps and who is making them. She is also trying to figure out who is stealing witch children and why. Anytime there are kids involved the story gets a bit more intense for me. I liked meeting some more quirky characters, specifically Bethany who seems just on this side of sanity. There was also a really cool revelation about the origins of the vampires and why they are cursed. This was a pretty good ride and it seems like Jane is finding all kinds of new friends to work with in New Orleans. I liked how the search wrapped up as the fight was really intense.Now back to the abysmal men in Jane’s life.So far our options are Leo – He is totally out for me because he has tried to kill her a few times. Seriously how is he even in contention?Then we get Bruiser (George) who is Leo’s blood servant so basically he is always going to take Leo’s side over Jane’s and isn’t going to be there when she really needs him. But at least they have some decent chemistry and he seems like a semi-solid dude.And then we get ‘The Joe’ a.k.a. Rick. I hate him and I’m going to jump on the burn him with fire train. He is a liar, manipulator and a player. We learned that in the last book, she actually saw him having sex with someone else that he was just using for information while he was actively trying to get her into bed. NO…just NO.The only guy in this that I found remotely jumpable was Derek an ex-marine that is probably too old for her that helped her in the Vampire Hunt. He is the only good guy in this so far.So Jane needs to gets some dating/picking a mate skills but her ability to kick some vamp ass is pretty solid so I will stick around, probably longer than some of the dudes in this.

Not as good as the first in this series for sure, but still decent.The things Unlike about this series: a well developed world with continuing world building; a large cast of characters that are multi dimensional, the solve a mystery piece to each book with a larger arc across books regarding Jane's lost years; and I like that these camps are different from camps in !its other stories.Things I don't like: Jane needs constant rescuing from her dumb decisions --how has she succeeded in life at all? Serioisuly, book 2 is a series of poor decisions she makes and then whines about. The romance-booooooring. I don't like Rick or Bruiser/George; she falls into bed with Rick at the end and it seems to be because it's convenient. shocking since she dithered so long over it, you'd think it would be because she actually cared about him romantically. But no, she cares about him but she doesn't care about him. Her interest in George feels shallow, too. She mentions repeatedly how she shouldn't do anything with either of them, but with George it's because his loyalty would never be with her--he proves this repeatedly in the novel and then looks at astonishingly with worry/guilt. She wants a strong, emotional connection but knows it won't work with him so she settles on Rick. Realistic, yes, but good reading? No. In the end, both men bite me and that does not bode well for the series unless Leo takes center stage. There are a host of issues with him but they could be worked through...Finally, I find the series both slow moving and wordy. It is heavy on descriptions that don't add much and I put the mystery together way before Jane does. This certainly makes it harder to maintain interest while reading.

Ok so I was really disappointed in this book because of the "Leo-trying-to-kill-her" plot. I mean to me this is a dealbreaker and I would like her to view him as 100% an enemy. But there is some flakiness in here where there is enough doubt as to if he MIGHT be a good guy or not? So hard to tell. She spends most of the book avoiding him and he tries to kill her multiple times! The author needs to make up her mind--either they are enemies or not--I would prefer that they stick to the "enemies" plot since I think they are way too gone with all the murder attempts to ever be friends (or more) again.I liked the action with Decker and the Marines. Those were the best parts of this book. All the vampire stuff just confuses everything in this book in my opinion. She insists on putting herself in the path of LOADS of vampires (like insisting on going to their party), and guess what? She gets attacked! Shocker! Straddling the fence here between attempting to make some of the vamps to be good guys just is not working for me. She needs to just leave them alone and hunt the rogues. Also leave Bruiser alone! My gosh he is so tied into the camp world how are we even considering him a romantic match??? And the Player? Really?? Ugh. I need a male romantic lead character that I can really get behind and cheer for. Right now I am cheering AGAINST all these guys and that is distracting me from the story. I will move on to book #3, but I am wary....

The twists and turns in this book are too many to even count. I stayed up 48 hours reading this book as fast as I could. Jane is more than something else she has more power than even she dreamed facing vampires with mind control power beyond anyone's imagination. She meets the originals children the first turned. You also learn the lore in this book about where vampires originated. You learn new words about sanity and what vampires will do for sanity. Jane and Beast help save the day all while fighting with the Blood Master of the City of New Orleans. She also learns about the woo woo files that NOPD keeps which is surprisingly helpful. Definitely worth two days without sleep!

Leo wants Jane's head for the death of his son, the fact that he died years ago and Jane despatched his killer wasn't a point the Leo wanted to hear. Bruiser spends his time between appeasing his master and trying to assist Jane. I think he is a little sweet on her!So Molly and the kids have come to NOLA for a break as hurricane Ada hits and they end up caught in another session of vamp politics to overthrow Leo.Little Evan and Angelina are grabbed leaving Molly wounded whilst Jane and Beast go looking for the kidnappers and the vampire raising rogues.

I am completely obsessed with this series, i only recently started reading Faith Hunter's books and i am kicking myself that i hadnt come across them sooner, she is a majorly talented author and i am determined to get all of her books now.I loved this book! I love Jane the most, both sides, both as her and as beast...She is filled with an inner fire that always sparks to life when anything concerns those that she cares about, she is definately a formidable lady that most would not want to challenge! There is nothing better than a strong woman who can take care of herself!!!This storyline was just wow!!! So many twists and turns and we are kept guessing the whole time and i really enjoyed that about this book, it was the fact that it didnt matter what happened next it was always a surprise!Cant wait to start the next book!

3.5 stars - It's a shame as parts of this series make it brilliant dark urban fantasy which could be 4.5 stars, but there are also parts of it that, for me, made it boring and repetitive at times!Unfortunately the flaw of the first book with irrelevant lengthy descriptions of things seems to still be here - this time, its that we get subjected to the same information just jumbled around slightly, every time Jane/Beast shift! Yes, we know by now that she goes into a grey space and reaches for the "snake" and her bones... slide and she shifts, changes and there is pain, pain, pain!!!! ...which then leads to a detailed description of the meal she has after she shifts EVERY time. Seriously, I think I read something to that effect about 20 times now between the first two books. Also the description of her shotgun is exactly the same in this one when the marine describes it as when she talked about it in the first book! There were just quite a few things like this that stood out to me where it made me feel I was re-reading the same thing again and again. Although there was a lot of good story in there, don't get me wrong, I still felt like I was skimming irrelevant/repetitive information and it needed a tighter edit.Something changed in this one too so that I felt Jane wasn't quite so tough as she had been in the first - I really loved that she could fight well, but she seemed to keep getting things happen to her in this one and almost getting killed! So I hope in the future she goes back to being as good as she was in the first book...I don't want her to end up being one of these heroines who is supposed to be tough but needs saving every 5 minutes.I do love hearing about her Cherokee and skinwalker heritage, so every time we learn a bit more about that I was pleased - we also learn a lot of interesting stuff about the vampires that's pretty cool. Unfortunately we don't learn anything more about Rick's tattoos yet, but I'm assuming/hoping this has some relevance and to be honest its such a freaky coincidence if it means nothing that I'm surprised Jane hasn't asked him about them yet!And that brings me to Jane's love/sex-life... hhmm I'm kinda disappointed... as long as there is a good story, then I would have been happy for this to stay as urban fantasy without any real romance thrown in, although it's always interesting when there are possible love interests and there is a bit of flirting/tension etc - although I also don't like the kind where the heroine just jumps into bed with every male character! I already mentioned in the first book how it was rather convenient that there were loads of gorgeous guys in the book and every one of them seemed to like Jane - well this one continues that and there are a couple of entanglements, but it was a bit confused. I wish that if there was going to be a romance, then it should be realistic - at the end of the book she ended up, literally overnight, in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, which kind of came out of nowhere considering how little we have actually really heard from this character throughout the two books so far! Not to say he wouldn't have been the logical choice, but if this was going to happen I just wish it had been done more realistically. Oh and after the sort-of sex scene early on in the book, I was expecting to get a bit more description than what we got when she finally spent the night with her "boyfriend"!! We got no details whatsoever - I didn't need graphic description, but I did feel kind of cheated all the same that we got absolutely no information, when it seems we get excessive detailed descriptions about tea drinking for goodness sake!...and then it ended with a wishy-washy epilogue...So yeah, overall I still like where the story is going and it definitely leaves me wanting to know what happens in all the loose overarching plotlines, but I am not sure if I can be bothered (or at least not any time soon), as this one left me feeling a bit deflated and a bit "meh"...

this was a good follow up to Skinwalker - although a little more complicated - which in itself is both a good and bad thing.Still worth reading for those who like something you have to work at following more and would be interested to see where she goes with the next one, if there is one (?)I liked the fact that it was quite witty and mostly lighthearted in it's approach. I can see the potential for some really good tales coming out of this writer as she is obviously fully committed to the genre and is not interested in just churning out magazine-freebie-tat... but, in my opinion, she also has a tendancy to over complicate the action and history which can make it all a little bewildering sometimes. I found myself turning back pages to re-read sections thinking I had missed something or to try and make more sense of what had just happened.Would definitely say it's good - but with a little room to improve! I guess you will have to read it and make your own mind up!

When a book starts, "Molly and the kids and me.." then I hate it just because of the abuse of the english language.I read the first novel in this series and was unimpressed but thought that the second would show an improvement. It didn't.I am sure that Faith Hunter has an avid following or she wouldn't have written so many of these books but, for me, they are excruciatingly painful to read. If you don't mind terrible grammar, tortuous english and empty monologue then you will probably enjoy the books. If not, then steer well clear.