Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning - Fever #4 Book Review

MacKayla Lane lies naked on the cold stone floor of a church, at the mercy of the erotic Fae master she once swore to kill. Far from home, unable to control her sexual hungers, MacKayla is now fully under the Lord Master’s spell.…In New York Times bestselling author Karen Marie Moning’s stunning new novel, the walls between human and Fae worlds have come crashing down. And as Mac fights for survival on Dublin’s battle-scarred streets, she will embark on the darkest—and most erotically charged—adventure of her life.
He has stolen her past, but MacKayla will never allow her sister’s murderer to take her future. Yet even the uniquely gifted sidhe-seer is no match for the Lord Master, who has unleashed an insatiable sexual craving that consumes Mac’s every thought—and thrusts her into the seductive realm of two very dangerous men, both of whom she desires but dares not trust.

As the enigmatic Jericho Barrons and the sensual Fae prince V’lane vie for her body and soul, as cryptic entries from her sister’s diary mysteriously appear and the power of the Dark Book weaves its annihilating path through the city, Mac’s greatest enemy delivers a final challenge.…

It’s an invitation Mac cannot refuse, one that sends her racing home to Georgia, where an even darker threat awaits. With her parents missing and the lives of her loved ones under siege, Mac is about to come face-to-face with a soul-shattering truth—about herself and her sister, about Jericho Barrons…and about the world she thought she knew.

Jericho Barrons = The Reason Real Guys Just Aren’t Good Enough.  Anti-hero/alpha-male galore, this man hasn’t done a single thing to make me think “He’s just a misunderstood good guy”, and several things to prove that he’s not.  But there is just something so intense and primal about him that screams “SEX”, even when he’s doing nothing but turning one derisive lip up at Barbie-turned-warrior, Mac.  He’s damn near irresistible.  Anyone who knows the first thing about me as a reader knows that I crush over fictional characters to an almost unhealthy level, so when I say that J Barrons now holds the number 1 spot on my long list of book hotties, it means something.  Mainly that you have got to read this series. 

What about the actual review?  Wait, that wasn’t enough?  Okay, hold on, let me get my mind out of the gutter….

Faefever left us in a very dark place, with hope nothing but a vague promise in the author’s notes.  Dreamfever picks up at that exact point after a quick recap prologue, featuring one amazing, kickass thirteen year old, Dani.  The first two chapters are told through her eyes, and while I prefer the more familiar mind of Mac at this point in the story, I have to say, Dani is freaking awesome.  She does what none of the older, supposedly wiser and more capable, people in Mac’s circle could do; she rescues her. (Sidebar here; am I the only one who keeps picturing her as an Irish version of Hit Girl from Kickass?)

Then she gives her to Barrons’ care, where the viewpoint shifts back to Mac.

And things get…intense.

I won’t say too much about it, but there is one chapter in Dreamfever that is hotter than all three 50 Shades novels combined and quadrupled.  As if we didn’t have enough reason to drool over Barrons, this novel thrusts them at you in a heady rush of those first Mac-minded pages.

Oh, wait, out of the gutter.  Hold on….

My favorite kind of series is the one with a large plot to connect the books, but individual plots per book, issues that come up and get resolved and leave a satisfying ending that also brings you just a bit closer to the ultimate ending, the resolution of the Big Bad Thing.  Fever is not one of those series.  For the most part, the books don’t have their own individual story arcs, but are separate chapters that make up the one major plotline; finding the Sinsar Dubh and getting rid of the big bad Unseelies that have taken a residence in and made a meal out of our world.  Dreamfever is no exception.  It’s 350+ pages of open-ended story progression and character development that, like Faefever, leaves you dangling cruelly over an open chasm – because “cliff” is much too mild to describe this hanger.

But you know what?  Just this once, I’m okay with that.

The best part of these books is the subtle development, the slow growth and even slower, vague answers.  None of the characters are static, they all react to their environment and change with it.  They breathe and jump right off the pages.  Whether you want to hug them, befriend them, take them into your bed or kill them slowly and painfully, these characters are real.  Dreamfever saw an abundance of Mac and Dani team-work, some developments between her and the other sidhe­-seers (led by the miserable old hag, Rowena), more LM evilness, a lot – though not enough by half – of Barronsiness, and just a touch V’lane and Christian.  We find out a little more about the dark book, and see teasing, sometimes heartbreaking glimpses into Barrons’ past, but there are a lot of questions left open for Shadowfever.  In fact, if forced to sum up this series in just one phrase, it’d have to be “Keeps you guessing until the last minute”.   I have so many theories about Barrons, about V’lane, about Rowena and the Sinsar Dubh and Dani and Mac’s heritage…seriously, I’ve been kept up at night with all the theorizing I do and questions I have.

Now, while I loved Dreamfever’s face and feet and everything in between, I make a point in my reviews to include the flaws, because every book has them and by ignoring them, all we do is create a hype that no novel could possibly live up to.  One of my main issues with Dreamfever was that it was so focused on Mac and Dani, and the other sidhe-seers, that we didn’t get nearly enough of the powerhouse guy characters in this one to slate my thirst for them.  If it can even be slated, which is debatable.  But I found myself, more than once, flipping to the next chapter to read a sentence or two and see if Barrons or even V’lane was in it, and far too often neither was.  Also, Mac’s narration has a tendency to ask too many questions about her situation, musings with question marks that take away from the flow of the story just a bit.  And lastly, this is the second to last book, but we’re still left – for the most part – in the dark regarding the most pressing questions.  It just seems like not so much should have been left to Shadowfever to explain, but at the very least, it promises a final read full of revelations and much-needed answers.

But that’s not even why my hands are shaking like a junkie in the need of her fix for that last book.  I just want to find out what happened at the end of Dreamfever, and what it means for my favorite anti-hero alpha-male.  I don’t know how Fever’s fans managed before the series was complete and they had to wait longer than the time it takes for Amazon to deliver.  This series has a way of keeping its fans invested, that’s for sure.

Dreamfever - 5 out of 5 stars