Temptress By Lola Dodge
Paranormal Romance (Novella)
June 12, 2012
Samhain

Reviewed by May

The girl was legendary. She’d taken more supers- villains and heroes – off the market than any other mercenary, and she was one of a handful of us who was unregistered with the bureau. Untraceable. It was assumed that her targets went missing or worse. Not to prison.

Jenny Ray aka Temptress works freelance for Las Vegas hotels (security) as well as working for the police, bringing super heroes in for trials. Her super power allows her to kiss any super and absorb their power, making it possible for justice to be done, and powers stripped from those who abuse them and break laws.

Just wanting to be at home watching Iron Chef, Temptress finds herself in a bit of a situation. She’s got to bring Steel in, but he’s a member of the Manhattan Ten super heroes, and they’re all in town for a bachelor party. She gets Steel alone and gets his powers and turns him in – but the leader (Thinktank) becomes a problem and she is forced to snag his powers too.

Unfortunately, something is going wonky with her powers and she can’t get them to go back to Thinktank.

“And what am I supposed to call you?” I would’ve folded my arms, but I didn’t want to drop my towel a second time. It had taken all the balls I had to stand in the tub. I’d almost had an aneurysm when he stormed in. Superpowers or not, I didn’t like being shaken out of a doze to strange men in my bathroom. “Or do you go by Thinktank in private?” I wouldn’t put it past him. He seemed like the kind of guy who was all hero, all the time. Standing like a tower of muscles, he wouldn’t have looked out of place with a cape and an eye mask.

“Just Tank.”

Why was I not surprised?

With villains afoot, someone from Jenny’s past coming back for her, and of course needing to get Thinktank his powers back, there is never a dull moment in this action packed superhero romance. I really liked Dodd’s style of writing, and how she worked in details about the characters while keeping things moving. I also liked how she blended humor into her story, and I hope to read a lot more from her in the near future.

I have such love for super hero romance, and there aren’t nearly enough of them out there! What I really liked about this book is that rather than “good or bad”, individuals with super powers can be any shade of hero, villain, and even the heroes can fall and make mistakes. So often the super heroes are portrayed as perfect, never straying to the dark side, and I really liked that in her world there is a lot more grey area.

My problem with Temptress is that while a really enjoyable read, I was left feeling like either it should have had less action and more romance development, or the story should have been written as a full length novel. The issues of Jenny’s past (that she can’t quite remember), her pain pill dependency, this new budding romance, and of course all the things that Jenny does for work not to mention Thinktank and the Manhattan 10 – a lot more detail and development would have strengthened this into an A read I am sure.

As it stands, it’s a really fun action packed story, but not very satisfying as a romance. There simply wasn’t time or space to develop a sense of relationship and true connection while doing all the stuff that Jenny and Tank were up to.

It is my dearest hope that Lola Dodge writes many, many more stories set in this world, and that we get the pleasure of a lot more stories about Temptress, the Manhattan 10, and any other supers she’d like to write about. I’m at the edge of my seat waiting and hoping for more.

Grade: B+

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