Today’s review is brought to you by the unnecessary letter Z…
Patty: OMG that that title is just the right amount of wrong. But seriously, how are we going to banter about this one? There is nothing funny or lighthearted about it.
Katie: Phatty brings up a good point. Lover Awakened, the third installment in J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, is no laughing matter. Maybe we need to switch gears and do a serious review this time.
First though, I need Bella, the female lead and supermodel, to go eat a sandwich. (I REFUSE to use sammie. Rachael Ray aggravates the crap outta me, and she says it all the time…) Bella happens to be best friends with Mary, Rhage’s shellan (vampire speak for wife, as you would know if you were reading the glossaries! See, listen to me, not Patty.). They were next door neighbors and hot tub buddies before the marriage.
Patty: It will be a cold day in hell when a book about a vampire with PTSD makes me do something “serious”. I was just at a funeral where we made my SIL laugh during her reading. By my calculations, mouthing the word ‘immorality’ while she kept trying to say ‘immortality’ has earned us all an extra 5 years in purgatory.
Anywhoodles, Zsadist (because ‘sadist’ and pun and one-word character cue) is a dude who is essentially a psychopath. He is part of the brotherhood but even big, bad Wrath treads carefully around him. Some Very Bad Things happened to Z earlier in life and he’s pretty much an anti-social ticking time bomb of repressed anger and self-loathing.
Katie: Zsadist hates himself so much, the only relief he gets is when he’s whipped by his twin, Phury. Seriously.
Patty: You KNOW some teacher on the first day of school called out “PuhYury? Peehurry?” and all the kids lahffed and lahffed.
Katie: Phury, btw, is celibate because of the Very Bad Things that happened to his twin and evidently has hair so amazing that women would pay beaucoup ducats in the salon to achieve the color. He also rescued his brother from said Things and lost part of one of his legs in the process.
Patty: How did that convo go? “Uh, yeah so I’m totally sorry your childhood was a horror show even though I had nothing to do with it and practically had to chew my own leg off to rescue you. I’m going to not have sex now. Like ever. Because that’s somehow going to make it all better. TWINSIES 4 EVA!”
~Phury Hair Toss~
Phury and Zsadist: like Legends of the Fall Brad Pitt and Fight Club Brad Pitt. One’s hot but you don’t like him in that way and the other is hot and you kinda want to have crazy sex with him but you know you’ll end up roofied and weeping.
Katie: Remember the air freshener smell mentioned in the first review? The magic smell that draws females to the males of the vampire race? Zsadist exudes that smell for Bella, and she is instantly smitten – inspite of the fact that he is OBVIOUSLY broken and bad news. I mean, how easy do the male vampires have it? They don’t even have to do a Joey Tribiani style “How YOU doin’?”
Patty: Well, in all fairness she is smitten before he does the whole Glade Plug-In routine. Even though he treats her like shit, scares the scrap out of her and is into penitence flagellation, Bella is all *swoon*.
Katie: Obviously there’s more to this installment than we’re letting on. I mean, Zsadist is in a VERY BAD place, and he knows it. Everyone pretty much warns her to have nothing to do with him, but through circumstances Bella keeps finding herself with him. ALMOST LIKE IT WAS MEANT TO BE, or something.
Patty: Kinda like us and this series.
