Forever by Jacquelyn Frank (The World of the Nightwalkers #2)
Paranormal Romance
May 28, 2013
Ballantine

Reviewed by Helyce

After being brought back from death, police officer Jackson Waverly receives the shock of his life: he has become host to a Bodywalker, a spirit that is reborn in flesh and blood, and part of a proud, ancient race that uses its extraordinary gifts to battle dark, evil forces. Jackson’s spirit is a powerful one—none other than the Egyptian pharaoh Menes, who longs to reunite with his eternal love, the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.
While Menes is obsessed with finding the perfect vessel for his queen, Jackson cannot stop thinking about Dr. Marissa Anderson, the gorgeous precinct shrink who keeps pushing him to confront his grief over the loss of his K-9 partner. But what Marissa really arouses most in Jackson is intense desire, which is exactly what Menes is looking for. To fight a great enemy, pharaoh and queen must join; but to host Hatshepsut, Marissa will first have to die. Fate has given Jackson a profound choice: save Marissa from Menes’ plan or keep an entire species from the brink of extinction. (Goodreads)

I was a big fan of Ms. Frank’s original Nightwalker’s series, but some of the spinoff stories following that didn’t work for me. Then I read a novella, Kane, that was included in the Supernatural anthology that came out in September 2011. That was quickly followed up by Adam in October 2011. Both these stories renewed my love of that original series, so I was very excited to give this Bodywalkers series a try.

The concept of a human, being given the choice to return to life, with the caveat that they must now host the soul of an ancient Egyptian being was an attractive theme to me. It seemed fresh as I don’t recall a lot of “body sharing” memes in my paranormal reading. I like that the human is given the choice to accept this, even though upon waking they don’t really have a memory of the bargain they’ve made. Through a process the author calls Blending, the souls do exactly that, the memories of each soul becoming available to both until ultimately, they join and become one.

Forever begins right where Forbidden ended. Jackson is already a few weeks into his Blending with the great Egyptian Pharaoh Menes. Jackson/Menes is vulnerable during this time as he is really not at full strength. The war with the Templars is always an issue and as they will sense Menes arrival into corporeal form, he chooses to hide in plain sight-continuing in Jackson’s role as a K9 police officer. This choice is two-fold. Menes is very aware of Jackson’s attraction to police psychologist Marissa Anderson. He also finds her attractive and as he is looking for the perfect host for his queen, Hatshepsut, he feels that giving time for Jackson to man-up and admit his feelings may work to his advantage.

Initially, I liked where the author was going with this. In the previous book, we get to know Jackson a bit because he is the older brother of Docia, the heroine in book 1. We are certainly in tune to the fact that Jackson has the hots for the police shrink, Marissa, but he doesn’t act on his feelings claiming it would be against company policy. That worked okay in book 1, but it drags into this book. So much so, that the romance fell a little flat for me. As the reader, we know that Marissa finds Jackson attractive too, but the whole “hands off” at work policy got a bit repetitive after a while. For me, it just stretched out the obvious and didn’t really build the sexual tension, just drug it out. Along those same lines, however, I did like that the author wrote a heroine that was known to our hero, Jackson, and also compatible to Menes and his love, Hatshepsut.

Of course, in order for Marissa to become a host for Hatshepsut, she must die. I’m a bit on the fence about the way the author chose to handle this. While Marissa was justifiably upset about her lack of options, I felt that she came to acceptance just a bit too easy. I also think I would have preferred her death to be less “staged”.

Secondary characters round out this story well enough, pushing the story arc forward with emphasis on the war that is to come between the Templars and Politic. A new, powerful, enemy is introduced and a war is inevitable. I am most anxious to see how the author plans to handle the character of Leo. Leo is a close friend of Jackson and Docia and is innocently thrust into this war. He’s truly in the middle of it now as is Marissa’s sister Lina.

Though the outcome was highly predictable and the romance a bit lacking, I’m still quite intrigued by this series’ premise and it’s connection to Ancient Egyptian characters. I will probably read book three, Forsaken. Leo is our hero and the blurb hints at his heroine being a Night Angel-so a new character is being introduced and I expect her to play a significant part in this war between the Templars and Politic.

Rating: C+

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