CURSED

Author: Jamie Leigh Hansen ISBN: 9780765357212 12/2008 PARANORMAL Publisher: TOR

In dreams… For twelve years the seductive dream has always been the same—a candlelit room, satin sheets, and a mysterious woman. Then, one night, everything changes. A mysterious entity shows Alex Foster a vision of his dream woman in danger from demonic forces. Elizabeth Raines has returned home to Spokane to care for her dying mother and abandoned nieces and nephews. With their family home ready to crash down around them and no help from her siblings, she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. Until the day Alex shows up, unwilling to love her only in their shared dreams. But the real world is much bigger than a dream. An ancient enemy has awakened, and only Alex and Elizabeth’s combined supernatural gifts can save them.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Jamie Leigh Hansen sets her paranormal romance, CURSED (sequel to BETRAYED), in Spokane, Washington, in 2004 where Beth Rains has returned home to care for her dying mother and ten nieces and nephews. Her only escape from all the chaos is her dreamlife where she regularly hooks up for very erotic encounters with her high school crush, Alex Foster. Alex has enjoyed the last twelve years of virtual sex, but would prefer to have a real life relationship with Beth. When a fallen angel snags him after a dream time with Beth to show a vision of the destruction of Beth and a tribe of young children, he assumes they are their own future family and he strives to find and rescue her. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have years to prepare against this danger as he assumed, when he finds her up to her neck in kids abandoned by Beth’s damaged siblings. He’s worked against dark forces before and has some resources at hand, but will it be enough to battle against the demon Queen Maeve?

Hansen creates a very scary inner world filled with demons, fallen angels, angels and other assorted ghouls and a duo similar to the angel and demon in the Terry Pratchet book—GOOD OMENS (they work together for mutual purposes as well as their own). Many of these beings have the ability to stay on their own side of the veil or materialize on our side. Beth’s father was a fallen angel who created children with her mother that are thus half human or Nephilim. They each have their own abilities, but because their father abandoned them as children, all but Beth have settled into various addictions to deal with the supernatural occurrences that overwhelmed them. Alex’s help both spiritually and physically, when he bails Beth out of her responsibilities, couldn’t come at a better time since she’s about to sink. I found myself cheering on Alex and his friends as they pull together to defeat Maeve, as well as help build a life for him with Beth and the kids.

I gave the story extra points because it’s set in my neck of the woods, but then it lost all the goodwill when the timeline didn’t feel right; Beth would be 30ish having graduated from high school twelve years prior, but she was the middle child and their father disappeared during the Viet Nam war, which ended mid-1970's, so he abandoned them years before he could have. Little things like that gnaw at me.

Although it is a sequel, CURSED holds up well on its own and gives the right amount of time to the spiritual war, the Raines household, the budding non-dream relationship of Alex and Beth and the intensely erotic encounters in the duo’s dreams. All in all, it is a really good, action packed romance set in paranormal realms.

Susan Barton