ARC Review: Dark Kiss by Michelle Rowen

Series: Nightwatchers #1
Publisher: HarlequinTeen
Goodreads//Amazon
I don't do dangerous.  Smart, über-careful, ordinary Samantha-that's me. But I just couldn't pass up a surprise kiss from my number-one unattainable crush. A kiss that did something to me...something strange. Now I feel hungry all the time, but not for food. It's like part of me is missing-and I don't know if I can get it back. Then there's Bishop. At first I thought he was just a street kid, but the secrets he's keeping are as intense as his unearthly blue eyes. If he's what I think he is, he may be the only one who can help me. But something terrifying is closing in, and the one chance Bishop and I have to stop it means losing everything I ever wanted and embracing the darkness inside me.... NIGHTWATCHERS When angels and demons must work together, something beyond evil is rising...

I don't normally do angel books. After the last two I read, Halo and Hush, Hush (both of which I gave one-star ratings to), I vowed never to touch one again. But I read the synopsis for this and I thought it sounded fairly interesting, and that I shouldn't discriminate against YA angel books. So I decided to give this a shot. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't quite as bad as I expected, although not exactly my ideal, but I will definitely be hanging around for the sequel and more of the awesome demon in this story, Kraven.

There are a few things that didn't make sense, and I'd like to get them out of the way first. The book starts out with a kiss from Stephen, Samantha's crush, who approaches her at a nightclub and asks her if she wants a kiss that will change her life. Now, I don't know about you, but if a boy approached me (no matter how hot) and asked me if I wanted a kiss that would change my life forever, I wouldn't just blink at him and nod. If he's never talked to me before, never shown interest in me previously, I'm not going to fall head-over-heels for him all of a sudden. There must be an underlying reason, and possibly a bad one. Samantha claims to be uber-careful, but I don't think that's the case, and she didn't have the sense to reject Stephen's kiss, or at least ask him what he meant by the kiss changing my life forever.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Our dearest protagonist decides that it's 1) a sensible idea to kiss this boy who has 2) never in his life noticed her before, and 3) completely overlooks the fact that it could be dangerous. If only more fictional characters acted like real, sensible people!

Another huge problem with the story is that the angels swear. If I remember correctly, not only does Bishop call Natalie a b****, but he also tells Kraven to 'go to Hell', something I'm pretty sure an angel would not say. The fact that Samantha decided she didn't really trust the angel also didn't make sense; I'm pretty sure that, given the choice between placing my trust in an angel or a demon, I would pick the angel. Samantha, however (and imagine me saying this in an extremely patronising tone), decides that the angel is probably pretty untrustworthy, and defies him at every turn.

And I thought she was meant to be smart.


Also, the insta-love. The 'romance' between Samantha and Bishop started out as an INSTANT ATTRACTION, which annoyed me to no end. The book really took instant attraction to an extreme, and I didn't like that at all. I sometimes feel that the concept of the Grays being intensely attracted to kissing was created to justify this otherwise inexplicable insta-love. I never really fell for the Bishop/Samantha romance; I always felt as though it was shallow and staying at the insta-love level in which it started.


Now that we have all that out of the way, here is the good: I absolutely adored the complexity of Kraven and Bishop's relationship, and although I wouldn't necessarily picture Kraven as the average devil, he was my absolute favourite character. I do hope Michelle Rowen decides to narrate the next book from his point of view--it would be really cool. He was hilarious, witty, kind, at times, which is why I don't think he was a great devil, and I really loved him. It would've been cool if he were the main love interest, without a love triangle, of course.

Most of the characters were okay and I did like Natalie, one of the meanie-poops, because she had motivations behind her actions and she had stories to offer...she was just an interesting character, you know? Many of the characters in the story stayed one-dimensional and very flat, and I feel that only the villains had real complexity. I never exactly connected with Samantha, I really disliked Carly, and I found Bishop hard to figure out but nothing more than that; I never felt for him as a love interest.

Overall, this book disappointed me a little, but it didn't make me rage or excessively headdesk. While I feel as though there are many areas of improvement and the characters left much to be desired, it was a rather fast-paced ride, and I will probably be sticking around for the sequel to wherever it takes us after that semi-cliffhanger ending. Two and a half stars; I made it sound worse than it actually is.

A free copy of the book was provided for review purposes (and received with thanks!) but did not influence this review in any way.