That hasn’t been the case with this book.  I’m not sure if the whole intrigue of a shape shifter doesn’t speak to me the same way her Carpathian (vampire) and other paranormal stories have in the past or if this particular story truly is lacking something.

It had been almost a month since I had picked it up, so a week or so ago I grabbed it, put on my sunscreen and headed out to my patio for an afternoon of reading.  And although it was entertaining enough to keep me in the sun for a few hours, I haven’t felt the pull to pick it up again.  I’m baffled.

Maybe I’ve just finally overdosed on Feehan novels.

If you’ve read Burning Wild and have found it a completely different experience, please let me know by leaving a comment.  Or if you’re finding the shapeshifting novel to lack something let me know that too!

I went to see the new Harry Potter movie yesterday.  Yes, I’m going to give my opinion, because it is based on a book, so it counts. Trust me.

My thoughts go like this.

If you’ve never read the book, this movie was fantastic.  If you’ve read the book and are under 18 years of age, Harry  (and even Ron) are getting pretty hot, so the movie was wonderful.  If you’re over 18 and have read the book you, like me, might be feeling that the movie lacked some very important information.

I realize that there is no way you can make a movie based on a book that totally lives up to the written word on the screen. Unless of course you’re Peter Jackson and the book was The Lord of the Rings.  But I left the movie theatre wondering just how they were going to transition into Movie #7, since they omitted something I feel is pretty important.  **Note, items mentioned below could be considered a spoiler if you’ve not read the final book in the Harry Potter series, proceed at your own risk**

You see, in Book 6 Harry painstakingly works his way through Tom Riddle’s (aka Voldemort, aka He Who Must Not be Named) life through experiencing other people’s memories of him via the Pensieve.  This of course lays the groundwork for helping Harry determine what items Voldemort used as Horcruxes in the 7th book.  Since the movie only shows Harry experiencing two such memories, and does nothing to imply or explain that Harry has in fact experienced many such memories, the movie leaves one wondering how Harry is ever going to figure out what items might be housing pieces of Voldemorts soul and not to mention how to find them.

I also had issue with the Dumbledore death scene as in the movie Harry simply watches as Dumbledore is murdered, apparently simply because the Headmaster told him to.  In the book however, it is quite different.  First, Harry is invisible, having donned the invisibility cloak and second, Dumbledore immobilizes Harry so that he can not come to the Headmaster’s defense.  The scene of Harry hiding below watching the scene transpire simply does not fit with the impulsive, brave to a fault young wizard who we’ve come to know in the books.  And again, things that come to light in Book 7  are supported by the events of this particular scene.

There was much that I loved in The Half Blood Prince  that didn’t make it to the silver screen.  The budding romance between Tonks and Remus (we do hear her call him sweetheart at the Weasley’s at Christmas however.)  And the beautifully sad memorial service for Dumbledore at the end of the book are a couple I can think of immediately.  But those small subplots are an understandable deletion.

The Pensieve memories and Dumbledore’s death scene however, in my opinion, were items that should have been represented the way they were written in the book.  And it was those two items that caused me to leave the movie theatre just a tiny bit disappointed in the movie.

Normally, when I crack open the cover of a Christine Feehan book I’m hooked, reluctant to put it down until I get to the final word.  For some reason this one hasn’t grabbed me like that.  Instead of immediately falling in love with the characters, I’m sadly disconnected from them in this book and I’m not exactly sure why.  Is the idea of a hero that truly is an animal too much to take?  Am I finding the heroine a little too human and thus wimpy? I’m not exactly sure. Even trying to picture Jake Bannaconni looking like my beloved Ben has done nothing to endear him to me.

Now it’s entirely possible that by the time I reach the end of the book I’ll be wanting a ‘Leopard’ man of my very own. I mean, The Lord of the Rings started so slow I almost stopped reading it and now it’s my favorite book of all time.  But right now I’m not impressed with the cold, calculating hero who spends his nights as a big cat or the quiet, sweet widow of a heroine.

In fact, I’m finding myself tempted to put Burning Wild aside to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the movie releases.  And it doesn’t even have sex scenes.

My personal favorites are the Carpathian series by Christine Feehan.  I’ve been enthralled off and on by Ms. Feehan’s ongoing sagas of dashing and doomed Carpathian males and their sexy and sultry female saviors.  The Dark Series introduced me to the ‘good’ vampires, the Carpathians, who were doomed to either become evil vampires preying on humans or destroy themselves unless they find their soul mate.  The one true love that completes them and saves them from death, or a fate worse than death.

Be warned, these are books for adults, not for the teen or preteen market that Jacob and Edward are aimed at.  These are definitely in the genre that my grandmother used to call ‘trashy romances’.  It’s escapism at it’s best. Strong heroes, perfect heroines and yes, lots of hot sex scenes.  I remember first getting my hands on “Sweet, Savage Love” in my late teens.  Even a steady diet of Harlequin Romances hadn’t prepared me for the sex scenes in that book.

Ms. Feehan’s books deliciously deliver lots of hot, steamy vampire sex. Which is probably why I’m hooked on them.

What is it about our love affair with vampires anyway?  I mean, think about it.  Would you really want to fall in love with an undead, blood-sucking monster?  I blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or more specifically, Angel and Spike, for our current romantic infatuation with loving the poor, misunderstood blood suckers.  Sure, I know that books and movies had vampire love stories before the whole Buffy and Angel thing. But Angel, the vampire with a soul, tortured by his past as Angelus, made it easy to fall for him didn’t it?  And when he moved on to Los Angeles, the fair-haired, torn between good and evil Spike made us want to believe that vampires could change their spots, now didn’t he?  And to make things even more appealing, both of them were extremely hot, even when they ‘vamped’ out.

Now the ‘trying to be good’ vampire is the latest literary and entertainment industry fad.  Teenaged girls and the Cullen family have made it cool to lust over vampires (and werewolves, but we’ll touch on that in another post at a later date.)  I guess I’m just a trendsetter, because I was lusting after vampires…or rather, Carpathians, long before sparkly skinned Edward hit the bookshelves.

Trust me, if you’re an adult that liked the Twilight series, try the Dark Series.  You can thank me later.

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Christine Feehan has branched out in the paranormal romance genre to include several more series which I am just starting to explore.  The Drake Sisters (magic), The Ghostwalkers (paranormal powers) and The Leopard Series (shapeshifters).  In the past few months I’ve read two of the Ghostwalker Series and am currently reading Burning Wild, my first foray into the Leopard Series.  Stay tuned for my thoughts and opinions…

You know what I mean, right?  Hot romances, flirty fantasies, passionate paranormal and even a few titles that cater to young adults tend to be what I reach for.  Granted, you may not proudly display the covers for everyone to see, but they are a true escape from our 9 to 5 lives.  I’d bet that more women (and some men) read the same type of books I do.

In fact, with this new website, I am betting on it. And I’m betting that all of you are going to want to read about what I’m reading about. And maybe even read along.

Who knows where it may lead.  We might even start our own book club.  Keep your classy titles Oprah and hand me a Harlequin.