Review: Passion Unleashed by Larissa Ione

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Forbidden Temptations…

Serena Kelley is an archaeologist and treasure hunter—and a woman with a secret. Since she was seven, she’s been the keeper of a powerful charm that grants her health and immortality . . . as long as she stays a virgin. But Serena isn’t all that innocent. And when a dangerously handsome stranger brings her to the brink of ecstasy, she wonders if she’s finally met the one man she cannot resist.

Fatal Desires…

Wraith is a Seminus demon with a death wish. But when an old enemy poisons him, he must find Serena and persuade her to give him the only known antidote in the universe—her charm. Yet, as she begins to surrender to his seductions, and Wraith senses the cure is within his grasp, he realizes a horrible truth: he’s falling for the woman whose life he must take in order to save his own.

I’ve been intrigued by the Demonica series since I read Pleasure Unbound. Each book has gotten better and given the reader a deeper look into Underground General and the demons that run it. I think that Passion Unleashed is the best book in the series. Partly b/c of Wraith, but also b/c of the progression of the overall story-arc.

Wraith is part human/vampire/demon. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He doesn’t care about anything, but his two brothers. And even that bond is tested when it comes to Wraith. After he was injected with a poison in which there is no antidote, Eidolon and Shade tell Wraith that he has to live or the hospital that they built with their blood (literally) will collapse around their ears. Already, Wraith’s sickness is wreaking havoc in UG. His only chance is to go after Serena Kelley, a charmed human. If he can take her virginity, he gets her charm which would cause him to stop dying.

Wraith has a big problem with that from the beginning; starting with the fact that Serena is human. Wraith never has sex with humans, but it seems like he has no choice. What he thinks will be easy, he soon finds is anything but. For the first time in his life, he is feeling something that he hasn’t felt before. Protectiveness, possession, and even love. He can’t take Serena’s charm b/c to do so would bring back the disease that was killing her before she was given the charm. For the first time in his life, Wraith is putting another person’s needs above his own.

Serena has no idea that the man she knows as Josh is a vampire/demon. Thinking that he was sent by the Aegis to recover an artifact, Serena has a hard time concentrating on what needs to be done. In the past it has been relatively easy for Serena to remain celibate. Now, for the first time in her life, she actually wishes she was someone else, someone that wasn’t “charmed”.

The more time they spend together, the more Wraith is certain that he can’t condemn Serena to death. That’s before he learns information from his brothers that rocks his world. Plus, he also has to stop Armageddon.

The fact that Wraith’s mate was a human woman made this book all the better b/c of his aversion to them. I loved how protective he was of her. The irony was that Serena made Wraith’s human side come out.

So Larissa, when is the next book?

4.25 out of 5.

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

Other books in the series:

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