ENTWINED

Author: Elisabeth Naughton ISBN: 9780505528230 8/2010 PARANORMAL Publisher: DORCHESTER

ZANDER—The most feared of all the Eternal Guardians. It’s rumored he can’t be killed, and he always fights like he has nothing to lose. But as a descendant of the famed hero Achilles, he’s got to have a vulnerability…somewhere. Forces of daemons are gathering and have broken through the barriers of the Underworld. Now more than ever the Eternal Guardians are needed to protect both their own realm and the human world. Zander can’t afford to think about what might have been with the bewitching physician he once regarded as his soul mate. But with eternity stretching before him, he also can’t fathom spending his life without the one woman who makes him feel most alive. Perhaps he’s found his weakness, after all…

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

ENTWINED is the second book of the Eternal Guardians paranormal romance series. Callia is an Argolean healer, doing her best to keep her king alive until his weak daughter can find a husband to help her rule. She doesn’t expect her former lover, the Argonaut Zander, to volunteer to be that husband. Zander is a near-immortal warrior with a death wish, looking for a reason to keep himself going. Will that reason be his new fiancée, his old lover, or... ?

The positives about this story were excellent characterizations and a couple of characters, Isadora and Max, whose stories I really wanted to know more about. The weaknesses were a primary romance whose conflicts could have come out of any contemporary novel and a much too contemporary feel for a paranormal. Yeah, there’s a bunch of daemons running around and battles, but the language, even the metaphors, felt very contemporary romance. Also, I think the romance started so late in the book that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind by then—I was more engrossed in the other parts of the story.
Still, I want to know what happens to Isadora and Max…

For those of you who follow publishing, the publisher for this book and the first in this series won’t be involved in the future, but the series has sold to another publisher and will be continuing in October 2011. The author has promised some free stories will be published set in this world in the meantime, so check out www.elisabethnaughton.com for details.

Heather Hiestand