Riley Jensen Series

I've listened to the first two books in this series and am hooked.  I think the best way to describe the main character of this series, Riley Jensen, as the Australian Anita Blake.  :-)  :-)  The two books are called Full Moon Rising and Kissing Sin by Keri Arthur.  Riley has the same qualities that Anita has... she can kick butt and take care of herself in a scary world, but she is beautiful and desirable.  Yes, like the Anita Blake books written by Laurel K. Hamilton, there are pretty explicit love scenes in these books.  But if this doesn't bother you, you'll love the rest of the story.  :-)

I can't wait to get the third book of this series because the second book really built up the story.  Like the first book helped build up the characters, the second book is the stepping stone to what I hope will be an awesome series.  :-)

Riley is kind of a freak of nature - going back to Anita being a necromancer, Riley and her twin brother, Rhoan, are part werewolf and part vampire.  You have your mix of characters that are really adorable - Riley's brother - and some that are just annoying.  I don't have a favorite character quite yet, but I'm leaning towards Rhoan's lover who is an ex-military but current make up magician.  :-)  I'll have to see what else this very minor character will have up his sleeves later on in the series.

I like the fact that the writer does not use too many super generic and now getting boring names.  Riley is not a name that I hear very often, neither is Rhoan.  Their vampire friend is called Quinn, which is also a name that I do not personally hear very often either, so it's quite refreshing to have some new names to put to new characters.  I also like the fact that the story takes place in a country that I'm personally not all that familiar with.  I have a few friends from Australia, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't taken the time to even read about the country or even look at a map.  So, this book got my curiosity going a bit and I at least had to see where some of the main cities are located.  :-)

I'm not going to really get into the story much because of two reasons - my brain is pretty tired right now so it's hard to think, plus my arm has been killing me for the past few days so I didn't retain as much as I would have liked.  So, it's a bit difficult to regurgitate some of the story for you.  I can remember, but don't know how to put that in words right now.  I'm sure that I'll be writing more about this series as I finish the next few books, so hopefully I can talk a little more about it then....  :-)