Early Review--Soul Kissed by Erin Kellison

While the world slumbers in Shadow, a fatal plague has swept through magekind. No one is immune to its ravages, and now that her father is dead, Cari Dolan must wield the fearful magic of her House to save innocent lives.

At the mage Council's bidding, dangerous outsider Mason Stray joins forces with Cari to hunt down the fiend responsible. But can he trust the daughter of wealth and privilege, especially when his own son is at risk?

The princess will always welcome to her bed the warrior, even if one must pay the ultimate price...

I received this early copy from the author in exchange for an honest review, I was in no way compensated for this review.


Erin Kellison's Soul Kissed is the second book in her Shadow Kissed series, which is sort of a continuation of her Shadow books. Basically the series as a whole is Shadow, but the series is broken up into smaller series...possibly trilogies but will have to wait til after the third Shadow Kissed book.

Moving on...I still very much enjoy this series! Calling it Dark Fantasy is the best category choice! It's not quite Urban Fantasy or even Paranormal Romance, but there are "strange" or "paranormal-like" elements to it, hence the "Fantasy" part and the "Dark" is there because, well, it's filled with Shadows and other baddies that just scream dark side!

This time around we have Cari, a young woman mage, dealing with the death of her father caused by a magical plague. She is now the ruler of her mage house. She is determined to find her father's murderer and bring about justice and to help is her Mason, a Stray, the product of a human and mage. It's a complicated mess to say the least, but Erin tells it remarkably well so that you aren't confused. Mason has a son who is his whole world and does everything he can to protect him.

Mason and Cari shared a connection years ago as teenagers, but alas, Mason had a girlfriend, a bitchy one too who basically left Mason with his son, Fletcher. Fletcher is a very powerful boy for eight years old and he will only get more powerful as he grows older.

Cari also has her own secret, a powerful fae possesses her. It's more like a cohabitation thing, but Cari does lose time, loses moments of herself when the fae decides to take control. It's not a pleasant thing. Especially when it becomes the reason why the angels want to kill her.

Cari and Mason were quite the pair. Both were stubborn in their own rights, but they have a shared past with one another. It didn't take too long before old feelings returned. I loved the romance between them. It was sort of a forbidden love since Mason is a stray and Cari a mage, but they didn't care. Like really, truly didn't care! 

It was great seeing returning characters from the series such as Kaye and Jack from the previous book in this series and even the gang from the previous series like Talia, Adam, Custo and even Khan! I like that this series continues to connect even if they are separate on some level.

The pacing to this one was good as well! Another seductively, dark fantasy meant to suck you into its world! Erin Kellison can write a wickedly good novel that's for sure, and there's no question about it that Soul Kissed was wickedly good!!

The ending to this one was nice as well! Not quite a HEA ending, but enough of one. There are still many problems going on in this world of Shadows Erin has created and I look forward to following them to the very end! Which hopefully won't be for a long while!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars


Soul Kissed releases September 3, 2013