Book Review: Bitten in Two by Jennifer Rardin

Bitten in Two

By Jennifer Rardin

7^th in the Jaz Parks series

Jaz Parks here. I. Am. Pissed. Just as Vayl and I arrive in Morocco to secure an ancient artifact, he wakes up calling me by another woman's name. And it's not even a good one. But since any form of argument transforms him into an unholy terror, I'm forced to play along until the gang and I can figure out what kind of power has so vastly altered his perceptions.

So it's time for me to do what any well-trained assassin in my position might do. I attack. What follows is a hair-raising, breath-taking bullet train ride to the finish as the crew battles on multiple fronts. I now know what I have to do - I must return to hell one last time.

Bitten in Two starts right where Bite Marks left off with the team going from Australia to Morocco to find the Rocenz, a demon forged tool that can reduce a creature to it’s most basic elements and the only way to free Jaz from Lucifer's Assassin Brude’s possession. The night they arrived in Marrakech though Vayl developments a weird case of amnesia that has thrown him back to 1777. He doesn’t remember the last 230 years and thinks him and his trusty servants (Jaz & Cole) are in Morocco for the protection of his ward Helena (Bergman). Jaz must persuade the warlock Sterling to help lift the possible curse put on her lover/boss but they have an explosive history, literally, they brought a house down on their last mission! Then while roaming the streets of Marrakech trying to save Vayl from himself Jaz picks up an unwanted admirer, err...stalker, who seems oddly turned on by her violent behavior. And now she also has to worry about the Demon Kyphas carrying a torch for her buddy Cole and hope that he isn’t falling for the demon as well. Talk about a birthday from Hell.

Bitten in Two continued the series with Rardin’s trademark humor and non-stop action and I found the characters to be smart, funny and engaging. This is definitely one of my favorites in the series; once I started it I found it very hard to put down and only did so when my kids started tugging on me practically yelling because they were hungry. I guess they had been trying to tell me this for a while. Oops. 

I spent this whole book either biting my nails, smiling/laughing or getting all teary-eyed.

At the beginning there was a lot of transitioning from past to present with Jaz & Vayl but I found it pretty easy to follow and you get a good look into Vayl’s not-so-sweet past and see the major personality and moral adjustment he went through the last 200 years to be the sexy vamp we love today.

The middle of the book reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with all the girl likes boy but boy doesn’t like girl because he likes other girl and so on but I thought it was a great addition to the whole story. You can see that Jaz & Vayl’s relationship has really matured and Bergman’s personality is maturing as well, then you have Cole who is such a good guy, he tries to see the good in everyone around him including a soul-stealing demon.

There are a lot of intense emotions going on in Bitten in Two but also the classic snarky dialogue and evil butt-kicking that you’ve come to expect in the series and another favorite of mine, Astral the robo-kitty, pops up quite a bit.

The end wrapped up some events nicely but definitely left it wide open for the next book with a major plot point left unresolved and some other little tidbits that I’m interested in seeing how they turn out.

There is a hilarious scene when Jaz takes you back a few days to when they all find out that Vayl believes Bergman is his young ward from the past, Helena.

LoL, pg 191 Bergman on painkillers;

I said, “So Miles, how long are you in for?”

“Overnight. Monique’s going to stay with me the whole time. She says she’s worried about me. But I think she might be one of those cougars. You know what I mean? Rrrrrow.”

And you have to imagine Bergman rolling the R’s. He had the best funny scenes and I loved them!

The next and last book in the series, which Jennifer completed before passing away, is The Deadliest Bite and is due out June 02, 2011

And if anyone has read this I had a thought pop into my head when I read that Helena had twins in America. Could they be distant relatives of Jaz? 

Rating: 4 Wine Glasses

Plus a snack tray

Smexy Scale: Steamy