Photo credits: aalmeidah, LMoonlight (pixabay) Edited by Vaishali Title: Judgement Day (Seekers #2) Author: Josie Jaffrey Genre/Themes: Adult Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Vampires, LGBT, Investigative procedural. Publisher: Silver Sun Books Year of Publication: 2021. Format: E-book (ARC) copy kindly provided by the author REVIEW WARNING: Some quotes may contain swearing and adult content. R E V I E W ...A series that’s not afraid of its own belonging in the bookish arena of fanged urban fantasy. The slinking vampires, the edging atmosphere, the untimely love skirmishes, the intrigue, the crime, the mystery, I very well might be in love with it all. Or maybe that’s just Killian Drake. A propulsive second installment that has me half-starved not for blood, but for a plot that only thickens with evasive and well-maneuvered intrigue. Josie Jaffrey has a way of delivering a story that’s almost utilitarian in style and voice but completely on the ball with an understated allure that shapes up a plot I never, not once, wanted to abandon. Thankfully, I was in a lucky enough position to read Judgement Day in the wake of May Day and it picks up steadily where the first book ends - honestly, I couldn’t restrain the laugh that needed to bubble up. Ms. Valentine certainly knows how to make an entrance. An ominous undercurrent lingers through and chases on the heels of a continued, atmospheric mystery. Jack - the mess - Valentine is back for round two in her pursuit for guiltless justice in Judgment Day. Following on from May Day, this second addition to the Seekers series eclipses the space of four months and settles right back into this preternatural urban fantasy. A fitting title for what I should coin a game-changing shift that revises everything Jack and her fellow Seekers stand for and against, all they know as unassailable law. Still, Jack has to reap the judgment of literally fraternising with fire. Because yes, she’s back in the not-so-humble abode of killian Drake, unmoved in the face of her judicial punishment after a worthwhile scheme that she’s definitely not sorry for. In her defense, she had a good reason, but that enjoyable sway in deliberate interest lands her in probation with her notorious frenemy. One who holds her fate in his wily hands. It’s a good thing her word isn’t law, but in this case, Killian Drake’s is. A day in the life of Jack Valentine isn’t boring, that’s something she can say for herself. She’s more of a disorderly deviant than a team-playing protege but her guild are her people, her ilk in a world spoiling with disquiet. The Seekers are pulled further into blindness and out of the loop while the players are on the move; while secrets and political strife swirl in the arena of old-age Silver. Christening her opposers with assumption and conjecture gives Jack something to fight against, but If there’s anything she hates more than her tally of antagonisers, it’s her own defenselessness. That just won’t do for this fresh-faced Silver in spite of all that holds her pregnable in a country of fellow blood-drinkers who outlive her by ancient numbers. She may have attracted the vitriol of the big contenders but she’ll humour the snubs and she’ll definitely be offended by the contrary. If you just happen to be one of nature’s natural thorns, why not barrel your way through the rose bushes while stabbing the waste on the way down? That’s Jack in a nutshell. It’s not all mellow sailing in lovers utopia for Jack though. She might have won the lottery by snagging herself an uber-intellectual girlfriend but the mini-fractures are showing, made bigger by the unscrupulous, meddling baron that stows away behind the doors of his mega-mansion. He’s the uninvited third party to Jack’s budding relationship, and try as she might, she can’t shove the recall of their hasty tryst and all that came after out of her think tank and into her residual cache of ‘no space for Killian Drake’. Far away from daylight and the first relationship that means something to her. Their history of sparring and snubs precedes them, so Jack’s about to do what history does so devilishly well: repeat itself. I must divulge. I’m presently in the thrall of book hangover territory. I had to make a real effort to tamp down the giddy fangirl in me after reading this, it was just so good! Well-written and teeming with May Day’s current of investigative mystique and fermenting secrecy that charts the ambling, inquisitive forecast; it’s as curious as it is queer, as suggestive as it is deviant, as character driven as it is a rolling gambit. The plot drives on and the diverting characters move with it. And that ending (everything was knowingly leading up to THAT ENDING) made me rue the valley between me and the arrival of the next book. I savoured every bit of Judgement Day, those morsels stashed away into the recesses of my scattered thinker. I had set voyage on the ship I wanted to sail with Jack, Tabitha and Killian, but you get to make the discovery all on your own. Killian Drake is still the unknown. He’s got the whole non-committal but elaborate aura wreathing him and the smoldering unsaid moments between him and Jack elude to what might unwind (what I hope will unwind). The will-they-won’t they strikes out for when will they. Everything between them feels forbidden and unmapped but strangely natural like two separately lit flames that lean in the space of each others’ heat. Add in the fact that I love the biting enmity and barb-slinging one-upmanship that’s routine with the energising power play of enemies-to-potentially-something-else and you’ve got the friction that keeps on giving, the provocation that snaps the passion back into place every time. I loved it. It’s exasperating and characteristic as much as it Is amusing and even charming. You can’t access the person behind the veneer with Killian entirely but the pieces you get are worth planting yourself in his favour. Either Jaffrey is fooling me so brilliantly, but Killian Drake has my faith big time for what might post-date Judgement Day. Killian Drake and Jack Valentine have some killer on-page chemistry. Jaffrey’s Seekers series holds a vessel of potential. She has an underemphasised talent for keeping a reader invested without the overstated, inflated pull of dramatic storytelling and theatrical prose. The writing, just like irreverent Jack, is without preamble. It’s completely moreish with simplicity. With the first open blood bar set to open in In Oxford and another death that puzzles the Seekers into trepidation, there are question marks sprawled all over Oxford and its high society. But what takes first place for concern is a lurching interior revolt that pierces Silver hierarchy and leaks out into civilian casualty. Jack and her fellow vampire detectives are out of their depth as a batallion that stands between open-wide Silver exposure and the camouflage of their entire race. You can’t outmatch staunch tradition. You can’t pit a cluster mice against a nest of snakes. You can’t lock horns with a type of beast forged by an age of hibernation. Everyone is playing for self-involved interests and the tide of closeted dissent, open division, divided allegiance, manipulation, betrayal and moving threats frames a stalemate that intensifies the coming of a day for judgment. You can appeal for the truth but you can’t lay waste to a lie that stings where it hurts and Jack’s right at the periphery as much as she’s in the middle of what’s about to take shape. This series brandishes a body of work that reads amazingly well. The elemental phases of the moving story inspires fresh curiosity, shifting conjecture and a palpable interest that pulls forth and pushes back menacingly, temptingly and a little bit savagely. Double-bluffs, double-guesses, herd disunity, micro-feuds, fraternising with friends, finks, foes and recalcitrant desire, all on the heels of another grisly investigation that sits at the foreground of a cloak-and-dagger backdrop. And those slippery vamps orchestrate so well. I’d blissfully let myself believe that this installment had the staying power to last forever and that rosy hope cunningly packaged my artless undoing when I ruefully ran out of pages to read. It’s been so long since I’ve steeped in the vapour of a series long enough to care about what happens next. While vamps aren’t my favoured creature of choice, I adopted their species-specific quirk because my senses were heightened, sharpened and fully-tuned to Judgment Day! Even the half-hearted and most well-read of bibliophiles should read this. Josie Jaffrey is splaying her cards in the most impelling ensemble and even if she’s really a deer in headlights stumbling her way through the writing graft, her consistency and creative sense precedes itself. She’s a dark horse galloping her way into the literary fray, kicking up dust in a space made for her. Sometimes desperate and taut, sometimes darkly comical, angsty and atmospheric, sometimes dour and sultry. Jack’s brain has fashioned the leads into a picture that reckons a blood war and only the first few drops have fallen. I stretched this book out for all it was worth and I’m as frayed around the edges for what’s to come. I gave this book 4.5 stars -I received an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review. NOTE: You don’t have to be up to date with the partnering books in the Solis Invcti or Sovereign series in the Silver universe to read this. Everything you need to know about the Seeker series is securely between the pages of these books. C O N T E N T W A R N I N G: One sex scene (the rest are implied or fade-to-black). Profanity. Spiking drinks with drugs. Aggressive and violent behaviour. Biting, blood, gore, murder, drinking and descriptions of murder scenes. Mentions psychosis and retrospectively/briefly mentions rape. Alcohol consumption, bloody descriptions of crime scenes and dead bodies. Mentions the use of a hard drug and other drugs/poisons. Mentions child neglect. --------------------------------------- M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read --------------------------------------- ________________________________________ R E L A T E D P O S T S: ● Book Review: May Day by Josie Jaffrey ________________________________________ F A V O U R I T E Q U O T E S: My tongue flickers at his skin, tasting the sharp tang of our mixed marks. Whereas my mark and Tabitha’s together made a balanced scent, sharp and sweet , the combination of mine and Drake’s is something far more intense. Instead of balancing, we magnify each other, sharp as unripe citrus, burning like ginger and rich as the smell of the earth after rain. It’s so brutal that I’m not sure I should like it, and yet I do. But if Matthew Felton is a mouse, then Killian Drake is a snake. He sits behind his gargantuan desk like a cobra spreading its hood. His hair is dark, but his eyes are pure black. He is arrogance and poise, with the kind of slick, irritating good looks that I might find irresistible if he were anyone else. Unfortunately, he’s the Baron of Oxford, my archnemesis and a terminal pain in the backside. After what happened with Winta , I didn’t think it was possible for me to fall apart again, but I was wrong. I’m no longer Jack Valentine, the untouchable Seeker with a drinking problem and a foul mouth. In the space of seconds I’m reduced to the girl I was twenty years ago, crying in the basement because I’ve given my heart to a beautiful vampire vixen who, as it turns out, doesn’t love me at all. He’s being deliberately cryptic. It irritates me, the way he’s looking up at me through his lashes as though he has some dark secret he wants me to guess at, as though there’s a mystery to him that I haven’t yet fathomed. The truth is it’s all bullshit. He wears his impenetrable smirk and his shark-black eyes like a mask, flashing them aside for moments at a time to give the impression that there’s something of more substance underneath. But I’ve seen Drake unmasked and there’s nothing beneath but more darkness, empty and cold. He is a shadow of a shadow, replicated into oblivion, fishing in the light for someone gullible enough to trust him. I’ve been a vampire for twenty years and I still don’t understand my world at all. ‘That’s what you really believe?’ I ask. ‘It’s why the Seekers exist. You tidy away our messes for us. You maintain the status quo. ’‘We administer justice.’ Drake laughs. ‘Not even you believe that. There’s no justice for us, no morality. There’s only what is within or beyond our power. You need to accept that. You need to face it if you want to change it.’ I look at him carefully, but I can’t see the lie. For the first time, I wonder what life is like for Killian Drake in that huge mansion of his. He’s always surrounded by goons, always dating beautiful women, and yet his girlfriend doesn’t stay the night. I woke up with Tabitha in my arms this morning, but if Drake slept at all last night, he did so alone. I wonder if his life is lonely. I hate him for that. I don’t want to think of him as a person with feelings. I’d rather think of him as a bastard with an agenda. There’s more softness in his eyes than I expected to see. I don’t want it. I reject it. I reject every kind word, every insinuating smile, and every hand he held out to me in the pretence of friendship. I reject the memory of his kisses and caresses and dark eyes, because I know their blackness is truly bottomless. There’s no soul behind them, just an abyss that yawns with sharp teeth. I know what he is now, and I won’t forget. It shouldn’t make any difference. I should be thinking about Raul. Of course Drake’s dangerous. I’ve always known that. Yet part of me hoped that he wouldn’t turn that side of himself on me, that I’d be the one person who was always safe from the monster. I allowed myself to believe he was driven by some chemical reaction that night in May, instead of by his nature. The truth is that no one is safe from Killian Drake. ‘I have a hard time believing that you’d get sentimental over anything, let alone a pen.’ ‘Even the worst of us has feelings , Valentine. We might try to hide it, but we still care, and sometimes we even want to help.’ ‘Lust isn’t an emotion, Drake.’ ‘Why not? You feel it, don’t you?’ It sounds like an innocent question, but it’s loaded with subtext. His gaze is dancing over my face, flitting down to my mouth. This is how he’s trying to win today: he wants me to admit that I wanted him. I can only imagine his glee if he ever discovered that, even after all the shit he’s pulled, I still find it difficult to sit opposite him like this and not think about his bite, about how it felt to be completely possessed by him. ‘Oh my god,’ I say. ‘It has emotions , just like a real boy.’ He leans forward with a smile. ‘I have plenty of emotions, Valentine . Sometimes so many that I let myself get carried away by them.’ His voice becomes low and intimate. ‘But you already knew that.’ I am also addressing my anger management issues.’ ‘Oh?’ he asks, blinking as he adjusts uncomfortably to Compliant Jack. ‘How?’ ‘Whenever I feel like murdering someone, I just smile sweetly at them instead. That way, when I do murder them, they’ll never see it coming.’ ‘I see.’ ‘Just be careful,’ Boyd cautions. ‘He’s a bad enemy to have.’ ‘Pfft, whatever. People say that about all my enemies.’ ‘Everyone has feelings, Jacqueline. It’s just that some people think theirs are the only ones that matter.’ ‘Well, that’s a fucking revelation. Thanks very much, Dr Freud. It had never occurred to me that I might be angry. Now all my problems are solved.’ ‘You’re angry with me.’ ‘Well, in my defence, you’re very annoying.’ I should have stayed away from him , but somehow I kept getting dragged back in. I don’t know how to explain that, and I can’t excuse it. He was magnetic. Dark. Dangerous. I can’t stress that last one enough. Tabitha is a short, soft confection of Scottish extraction. She dresses like a librarian and wears her reddish-brown curls piled on top of her head, secured with whatever stick-like objects she has to hand. Today it’s a fork and a toothbrush. Spoilery stuff 1) I had an elaborate theory about Yolande - Well…my paranoid mind did get away from me but I bizarrely thought that she was Winta, some clues were there and my imagination filled the blanks and spun a wild tale. I definitely held my suspicions about Tabitha close since book one while trying to figure out how deep she might have been embedded in the larger scheme. I had a strong hunch that she played a part but I wasn’t sure to what extent. One of the reasons why I’m die hard for Killian Drake. 2) I’m shipping Raul and Cam! I love interacting with fellow readers, reviewers, bloggers and writers! Hearing about reader opinion is the fuel to my reader appetite, so get in touch and comment below! SHARE ON FACEBOOK Leave a comment and let's talk about |
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