Eve of Darkness: Marked, Book 1

Eve Hollis is an interior designer. When she is attracted to a stranger that reminds her of her first love, she finds herself compelled to follow him into a stairwell for a quick fling. While in the throes of passion, the stranger brands her with the Mark of Cain. As Eve soon discovers, sinners branded with this mark have been drafted this way for centuries in order to help kill demons. Now suddenly, the man who took her virginity and her first love, Alec Cain, is back in her life after a ten year absence only he's not just a sexy biker, he's the original Cain, from the bible. And the guy in the stairwell? Reed Abel, as in Cain's brother. Now Eve, finds herself in the middle of the original sibling rivalry, having to maneuver the bureaucracy of the heavens where angels act as CEOs of firms that specialize in demon hunting.

Aside from the fact that it appears that Eve was totally set up and is being punished for something that was not her fault (geez, how typical, the girl gets blamed again), my major complaint about this book is that it is the first in a trilogy. I have never read a book where the cliffhanger comes in the first chapter. But that is exactly what happens here. After leaving us hanging over Eve's fate, the book takes us back 6 weeks to tell the beginning of the story but only returns to a few hours before the events of the first chapter thus leaving us hanging. Since this book just came out May 2009, the second book was released a couple of weeks later and the third book is set for release at the end of the month (June 2009), it seems to me to be a blatant cash grab releasing one long book as several shorter books. Granted, at just under 350 pages, this isn't a short book. Maybe they could have released it as two books instead of three.

Anyway, despite this, Eve of Darkness provided a promising start to this series. Eve is a smart and spirited heroine. She takes her fate in stride and adapts quickly to the circumstances. Even though she is in over her head, she's not a quitter. The romantic triangle set up between Eve, Cain and Abel, promises to be interesting, although I find myself rooting for Cain. I will definitely be picking up the next book, Eve of Destruction.

I found this book to be unexciting. This is the first novel I've read by this author. I read reviews of some of her other books and readers seemed to be impressed by her writing. There is a significant amount of sex in the opening chapter. It seems to me that when an author has to start with this, the author is desperate to keep the readers engaged. If this was her intent, she failed miserably. The plot is going nowhere. I doggedly forced myself to read three-quarters of this book and found it completely uninteresting. She offers nothing new to the paranormal genre. This book is the first of 3 in a series. I will not purchase the next 2 books.