3.5 stars. This book started out great, and it made me laugh a number of times, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting, and so I was a little disappointed by it. I think that in part this is a fault of the marketing of the book. The cover is dark and brooding, and the series title (Deadly Angels) and the book title (Kiss of Temptation) as well as the back-cover copy all made me think this was going to be a dark, serious paranormal title about the war waging between vampire angels and vampire demons for control of earth.
Well, not so much. The battle scenes are brushed off in mere paragraphs, and the vampire demons (Lucipires) end up coming off as very little threat, since they're defeated so easily and end up looking less than clever. They're even given a silly nickname (Lucies) that undercuts the threat they supposedly represent. In the end, the stakes seem to be not that great; there's no true threat here to mankind or angelkind.
Additionally, the heroine, Gabrielle, continues to question the existence of vampire angels and demons up until just a few pages from the end of the book, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including a journey to the vampire demons' lair. She vacillates constantly between believing, then not believing. At times, she seems to have forgotten things she's seen and sometimes doesn't react to them as you would expect. For example, the first time Gabrielle sees Ivak's vampire fangs--right after meeting him--she doesn't freak out. At all. Neither does he. The whole thing is handled in a strangely casual manner on both sides. However, when another character sees Ivak's fangs a bit later (after Ivak strategically decides to reveal his identity), that character comes unglued (as you'd expect) and Ivak is concerned about the character's reaction (again, as you'd expect). Later, Gabrielle seems to have forgotten about seeing Ivak's teeth altogether, as she continues to question what he's told her about himself. I'm beginning to wonder if that scene was supposed to be cut but wasn't, or if some kind of explanation for her strange behavior was accidentally dropped from the book.
All is not lost, however. The book's strength lies in its characters, from the lusty Ivak to the stalwart Gabrielle to the wacky Tante Lulu and her crazy Cajun clan. It's unfortunate that their evil counterparts are given such short shrift; some clever, three-dimensional villains thrown into the mix would have upped the stakes considerably and kept the tension high.
There is some nice sexual tension between the leads, though at times it seems as if they both spend more time in Tante Lulu's company than in each other's, so that tended to mute the romance for me. However, there is some nice steamy sex in the story, and the author has fun with teasing us with several funny/spicy sexual dream sequences leading up to the "deed."
If you like your paranormal romance on the lighter side and are looking for something a little bit different, this series might be your thing. I tend to like paranormal romance of the darker, more angsty sort, so this wasn't quite my cup of tea, though I certainly did enjoy parts of this book. If it had been clear to me from the beginning what kind of book this was (light and humorous), I might have enjoyed it even more.