Guest Review: Heart of Darkness by Lauren Dane

Posted May 30, 2012 by Tracy in Reviews | 1 Comment

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Tracy’s review of Heart of Darkness by Lauren Dane.

Meriel Owen, next in line to control the largest organization of witches in the country, is asked to investigate the owner of a notorious club reportedly siphoning magic from the font of the Clan. It’s a direct violation of the Clan Code of Conduct, but one look at Dominic Bright and Meriel’s willing to make a deal. One taste of the sexually feral outlaw witch, and she’s eager to go further: he’s her bond mate, a legal conduit into the world of Clan witches and their magic.

Playing by the rules isn’t Dominic’s style, but bonding with Meriel—night after explosive night—is. However, Meriel has unwittingly invited someone else into her world: Dominic’s mother, a dangerous and poisonously influential magic addict whose lust for death and power corrupts all she touches. Now her shadow is closing in on Meriel, her Clan, and the man Meriel loves, and it’s casting them all into the inescapable heart of darkness.

Meriel Owens is next in line to run her Clan of witches. She gets assigned to go talk to a local man who is a witch and began a nightclub but started pulling from the Own “font” which is power. Since he’s not part of the Owen clan that’s a big no-no. When Meriel meets Dominic Bright she knows immediately that he is her bond-mate. Meriel is a nice person though and doesn’t insist that he accept it right away as he grew up not even knowing about bond-mates. Meriel lets Dominic take his time and decide whether a life with Meriel is what he wants. Luckily for Meriel Dominic decides quite quickly that this is definitely the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Some bond-mates are just magickal mates and still marry others but for Meriel and Dominic it’s definitely a romantic bond. They are more than happy to explore that side of their relationship as they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other and frankly love being around the other person.

While the couple is exploring all there is to know about the other there are mages running around with “turned” witches and anti-Other hate groups to steal power and magick from other witches. Unfortunately this group which Meriel believed was just on the East coast was now in Seattle and getting closer and closer to Meriel. Dominic’s not thrilled with this at all especially when he finds out that one of the turned witches is a family member.

I’m not normally a fan of books involving witches but this was one that I really liked. Meriel was just a kick-ass witch. She wasn’t really soft even though she could still be sweet with Dominic. She knew her job with the clan and didn’t take it lightly. Dominic was infatuated with Meriel from almost the moment he laid eyes on her and that didn’t change at all throughout the book – it just go stronger. That’s pretty much how the relationship went through the whole book as they just kept getting stronger and stronger. I loved how Dominic was more than happy to learn more about spells and his magick and wasn’t cocky with thinking he knew it all. He was a great hero and was perfect for Meriel.

The mage/turned witch story line was great as well. It was done really well and was told in a way that I got a real feel for who those people were and the damage they were doing to the “real” witches. I loved the secondary characters as well with Gage and Nell who were hunters in the Clan, Nell’s husband William, Meriel’s mother Edwina and of course Dominic’s friend and business partner, Simon.

This was a great book and I can’t wait to read more books set in this world.

4.25 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.


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One response to “Guest Review: Heart of Darkness by Lauren Dane

  1. Di

    This was the first book I read by Lauren Dane – now I want to read them all – loved the Brown Siblings series too.

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