Tuesday, August 27, 2013

My Personal Review for Wrong Side of Dead by Kelly Meding

I fell in love with Kelly Meding's wonderful and gritty urban fantasy series and her fourth book into the series does not disappoint!

What happens when you have died, resurrected, tortured and more? Evy Stone is about to find out!

My Rating for Wrong Side of Dead (Dreg City Series Book 4): 4 Stars

Evy Stone has been tortured, died, been brought back to life and has enemies coming out of the woodwork has all but broken her into pieces. Only the strength of her love for Wyatt, another triad member and her strong will to survive has Evy been able to make this new body of hers her very own. But the mad scientist, Walter Thackery, is still loose and after Evy’s unplanned visit with him, she knows he has plans on top of backup plans. But that isn’t the only fight she has to deal with. Add in half-blood vampires who have some kind of reason and that makes them even more deadly than before and a long thought extinct were/shape-shifter has returned with a vengeance. All Evy wanted was to reconnect with her love, Wyatt, and heal her physical, emotional and mental self. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface once Evy finds out what has happened while she was captive by Thackery. Secrets explode, alliances broken as new alliances are made. The triads that used to patrol the streets, keeping the citizens of Dreg City safe are in tatters. What happens next will change the war that is brewing as Evy, Wyatt and all their friends are put to the test. The question isn’t who will win but who will survive in the end.

When I saw book four in the Dreg City Series, I was ecstatic  This series is one I can't get enough of. With amazing  cast of diverse and unique characters, a fast paced storyline and twists that leave you gasping in disbelief, well, lets just say this series is one bumpy ride from start to finish and enjoy the ride. Ms. Meding delivers one pulse pounding ride from start to finish, tying up sub-plot points while weaving a few new ones to keep the reader on the edge of the seat. Wrong Side of Dead picks up right where book three, Another Kind of Dead, left off. The reader is treated to a story full of hidden nuances, exquisite storytelling and multi-dimensional characters that fairly leap off the pages into your living room. The writing is tight and storyline was fast paced with a few twists I so did not see coming at all. Everything comes to head in Wrong Side of Dead and for our gutsy kick butt Evy Stone, well let’s just say the reader finds themselves wishing for a down day for her. 

Evy has been through the wringer and frankly I felt for her. The poor thing couldn't catch her breath or even change her clothes before finding out what happened those months at the hands of the insane doctor, Walter Thackery, and finding her world as she knows it utterly in tatters. Everything changes with a blink of an eye and the reader is caught up in this as well. I have to give this author props in creating such a complex, layered world to enjoy. Peppered with unique paranormal creatures as well as those we read about every day (vampires, shifters, fae, etc). This is an author who knows this world intimately and lets the characters tell the story. The twists that you don't see coming will leave you breathless even as you flip the pages to see what happens next. This is truly the work of an author who knows how to build the world and create appealing characters to fall in love with. They are well written; flawed creatures who I can say made me want to take them home and give them a hug or crack them in the head. The secondary characters are not lacking either. Evy’s relationships meld and change fluidly and I loved how this author has you sympathizing one minute with her then next rooting for her to tear the guy’s throat out the next.

Wrong Side of Dead is more than a kick butt heroine and paranormal creatures but a complex mix of lives lost and won, relationships that strengthen or die and finding how much you can take after all the pain-emotional, mental and physical-is upon you. Evy Stone is one character that I can’t get enough off and I can attest one I just love to pieces. If you enjoy a story that weaves a spell around you, makes you fall in love with the characters and more then you need to run-not walk-to grab this entire series. I can attest it is one series I re-read a lot just to get my fix for Evy’s snarkiness, her determination and her love of life. 

Ms. Meding is fast rising onto being right up there with the likes of Sherrilyn Kenyon, JR Ward and other top paranormal/urban fantasy authors. Now I just want to know, when will book five come out?

This is an objective review and the book was given to me by the publisher

The Dreg City Series:

Book One~ Three Days Dead

She’s young, deadly, and hunted—with only three days to solve her own murder…

When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue – in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there – her troubles are only just beginning.  Before that night, she and the other two members of her Triad were star bounty hunters — mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives, but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor . . . and she can’t even remember what it was.

Now she’s a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice – and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days, Evy will die again – but this time, there’s no second chance…

Book Two~ As Lie the Dead

Evangeline Stone, a rogue bounty hunter, never asked for a world divided between darkness and light…

…or the power to die and live again in someone else’s borrowed body.  After a murder plot meant to take her out leaves an entire race of shapeshifters nearly extinct, Evy is gnawed by guilt.  So when one of the few survivors of the slaughter enlists her aid, she feels duty-bound to help–even though protecting a frail, pregnant shifter is the last thing Evy needs, especially with the world going to hell around her.

Amid weres, Halfies, gremlins, vamps–and increasingly outgunned humans–a war for supremacy is brewing.  With shifters demanding justice, her superiors desperate to control her, and an assassin on her trail, Evy discovers a horrifying conspiracy.  And she may be the only person in the world who can stop it–unless, of course, her own side gets her first.


Book Three~ Another Kind of Dead

She was born for this fight…no matter how many times it kills her.

She can heal her own wounds. She can nail a monster to a wall. But there’s one danger Evangeline Stone never saw coming.

Been there. Done that.

Evy Stone is a former Dreg Bounty Hunter who died and came back to life with some extraordinary powers. Now all but five people in the world think she is dead again, this time for good—immolated in a factory fire set specifically for her. Evy and Wyatt, her partner/lover/friend, can no longer trust their former allies, or even the highest echelons of the Triads—the army of fighters holding back from an unsuspecting public a tide of quarreling, otherworldly creatures—they can trust only each other. Because when the Triads raided a macabre, monster-filled lab of science experiments and hauled away the remnants, they failed to capture their creator: a brilliant, vampire-obsessed scientist with a wealth of powerful, anti-Dreg weaponry to trade for what he desires most of all—Evy Stone: alive and well, and the key to his ultimate experiment in mad science.

and coming in September 2013, the next chapter in the Dreg City Series.....

Book Five~ Requiem for the Dead

She’s died twice while protecting her city…and she’d do it again to save the people she loves.

After a deadly, artificial infection forces the vampire Families into a self-imposed isolation, the city’s protective Watchtower forces are depleted by one third, leaving humans and shifters to shoulder the burden.  Human enforcer Evangeline Stone is determined to find a way to help her vampire allies, but she already has her hands full—investigating an escalating series of goblin attacks, dealing with her half-werewolf lover, locating three missing werewolf teenagers, and learning to trust her non-human coworkers.

When a potential cure for the vampires’ infection is given to her by an unlikely source, it’s just as quickly stolen—collateral damage in a power play within the were-cat Clan that leaves one human ally dead and another horribly injured.  With Wyatt Truman still adjusting to his new life as a half-werewolf, Phineas missing in action, and her shifter allies crippled by internal anarchy, Evy has to rely on her own strength and instincts to steal back the cure, stop a murderer, and to save the Watchtower before it’s destroyed from the inside out.

RELEASES: September 16 in Digital format only (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc…)

Note from the author: I am digitally self-publishing this book, because Evy’s story isn’t over. There are no current plans to offer a print version, but that may change in the future.

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