From USA Today bestselling author, Karpov Kinrade, comes the next adventure of Eve Oliver and the brothers of The Night Firm.
When I got offered a job at The Night Firm, I had no idea how much my life was about to change. I didn't know vampires exist. That dragons rule a world full of beings most think are fairytales. And I didn't know how much I would come to care for the Night brothers. But now it's all about to fall apart. Liam's been arrested and accused of a crime he didn't commit. I'm lying to the men I'm falling in love with. Secrets from the past are threatening to destroy us. And in the middle of everything comes a truth too painful to face. And a lie too deadly to ignore. All I know is this: I'm going to lose a man I love by the end. I just don't know which one.
The Night Firm series:
I Am the Wild (book 1) I Am the Storm (book 2) I Am the Night (book 3)
Karpov Kinrade is the pen name for the husband and wife entertainment duo Lux and Dmytry Karpov-Kinrade, aka The KK Duo.
Together, they write award-winning, internationally and USAT bestselling books, make music, create art, write screenplays and direct -- all the things.
Look for more from Karpov Kinrade in the Vampire Girl series, Endless Magic Online, The Night Firm, The Last Witch, Dungeon Queen, The Nightfall Chronicles and The Forbidden Trilogy. If you’re looking for their suspense and romance titles, you’ll find those under Alex Lux.
Check out their music by clicking on the Music tab.
They live in wine country California with their three offspring who have crazy creative genius oozing out of them in the form of music, art, performance, and all the things, and too many cats who all think they rule the world (spoiler alert: they do).
While I loved the first book, I really struggled through the second.
In I am the Wild, Eve was already the only real character of the book, the supporting cast, love interests or not, only there to make her shine even more. Eve was perfect, smart, sassy at some time, kind, gentle, strong but vulnerable. She was an awfully convenient combination, making her deal perfectly with any kind of situation.
But I would not go as far as call her a Mary Sue because she was not boring. Just annoyingly incredible.
I am the Storm goes basically the same. Eve is still Eve and everything still goes her way, tragedies or not. I could not read the book without feeling being fed some kind of worship towards her and it really slowed my progress.
And in the end, the book will forgotten far too fast for the time I spent on it. Three stars is defiantly above what I am feeling about it, but it makes me sad to think about lowering my rating.
Well to be honest I wasn't so sure about this after reading how the beginning of the book went. I was even less sure as it went on, and then in the finale, some things were cleared up and some things weren't. So i'm going to do my best and try to evaluate this as objectively as possible.
First, I'm gonna talk about Eve.
Eve Eve is a character who bears the weight of a heavy conscious. Her moral compass is very black and white, with not a single patch of grey. A solid chunk of this book is dedicated to her inner torment in this matter. Thankfully, another solid chunk of it is dedicated to her moral development as well. Many times it was difficult for me to be in her head while she struggled with this, but at the same time I realize that my moral compass is not like hers at all.
I'm not a Hamlet type person struggling with the concepts of good and evil, I could even make the argument that things like 'evil' don't exist. But Eve IS that kind of person, and with this in mind I understand her character better now that I've finished the book whereas before it frustrated me.
I also have to acknowledge that for the people who are left behind after the suicide and/or heinous criminal acts of loved ones, it is an agonizing position to be in. I've experienced this with someone in my life, and I think because of it I was able to understand Eve's actions in regards to Adam. It's not easy trying to reconcile the person you love with the action of the person. I'm not entirely sure it is something you do reconcile. There's not really a manual they hand out to people on what's the correct way to go about it.
The Guys This book focused on one in particular, and I feel like they all sort of... faded into the background.
We barely heard from any of them. Even the one that was more of the focus I feel like there was very little actual connection between Eve and him. The writing just told us there was but little to make me feel it.
In addition, the romance going on felt a little insincere and flat. It just was, because it was. They haven't even known each other all that long technically and yet there's a lot of love professing going on.
The Weird The twists were amazing. I really did get my socks knocked off from them, I wasn't expecting them at all. And with them in mind, a LOT of the weirdness in the book made sense.
The Confusing and Conclusion Overall, this one wasn't as good as the first one for me. I loved the twists, I still love the world, and I will read the next one. I am now straight up confused about everything because of those twists. But I believe they will be resolved in the next one. Some things may have fallen short this time, like the lack of romantic connection, too much inner monologue, too much mary sue and gary stu, but it was still alright. ["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>
Not sure how I feel about this one. I know I enjoyed book 1 more and as usual I had forgotten everything from it. Luckily this picked up right where it left off on that not so surprising reveal. I regret not making a "guy guide" for the brothers because it took me half of this book to remember who was who. I'm still not sure so I cant even do one now ....doh!
I still like the world but a little more vampy action is needed for a book with all vampires in the harem.
I got bogged down in a lot of the morality debates in this one. Questions of good and evil, right and wrong just went round in circles and took up pages of dialogue with no conclusions. Secrets are rife and the “I don’t know what I am” thing is getting old. Especially when you have Dragons who know and won’t say!
On the other hand there was a big twist at the end which I didn't see coming and I think I'll go on with the series as long as the rest of the cake-eaters do too.
In lumen et freaking lumen I am so tired of seeing that sentence albeit I saw it just once in this book but that was one too many.
If I read the next book I might just go to the end and see what happened. Everything of note happens in the last ten pages , there are usually small things happening but those things can actually be ignored without missing the story and that's what the entire book consists of, minor plot. So yea a big if about the next book.
This is the first series of the author duo Karpov and Kinrade I read. Thank you for the free audiobooks included in my subscription. Otherwise I wouldn't have read this series, because they are not in my KU subscription. (I do understand why author don't do KU and I'm okay with this.) Also the blurb did not interest me so much that I wanted to buy the books. But I was wrong.
I like the unique description of vampires. Normally I avoid Vampire books, but I enjoyed this series. I liked that it wasn't drawn out. I never felt bored or got distracted and binge listened to the three books in the series.
I got through most of it but the author just kept getting philosophical, which I usually appreciate in a book but not when it seems like the philosophical musings actually take up half the book. And there just want much character development, I don't plan to continue this series
Everything feels rushed. Ther is no way someone develops that kind of relationship and trust as is shown in the book in a few weeks besides also being no chemistry between the characters. Probably would have been better if there was no "romance" and the story focused on the progress the heroine makes after all that happened to her.
I really liked the first book, but found the main characters actions and reasoning annoying in this story line, which makes it hard to appreciate the story as a whole.
I really enjoyed it, though something about this one felt a little less polished than the first one. Just a little clunkier. But maybe that was because the first one was so sublime.
I did love the way things resolved, though it broke my heart a bit ... but honestly, I'm glad that
The revelation at the very end was super exciting, and I'm dying to see where it goes. Next book please! :)
Book 1 was a good series starter. Couldn't wait to see where it goes. This book kind of confused me with where it went and how the story developed. I'm almost done the third book and I've gotta say I'm disappointed. Book one set things up really well but this one added a new character and gave a ton of pages to growing that relationship while neglecting the cores dynamics. The giant let down in this series for me was a colossal lack of relationship building. They go from strangers to in love without depth or supernatural justification. They barely spend time together and the bulk of the time together is spent doing rather than sharing anything- except for the new relationship. The new relationship feels off and kinda doomed from the start. It's weird and it leaves it all feeling pretty hallow and superficial without much relational growth for the core characters. This had so much more potential than is explored. It's well written and the plot is fairly solid. I just can't overlook such a glaring deficit.
This is truly an enjoyable book. I would rate it a 5, save for the questionable emotional aspect. Thise moments feel like they should be pivotal, yet the sexual embrace lacks the strength and depth this narrative almost screams for. Aside from that, this is a fantastic romp through a truly paranormal world - one where a as human who isn’t, learns who she might be and where she is going. FYI, that twist? It’s hinted earlier.
Pros: - very interesting story, which moves fast. - Good characters. - Lilith. Who knew she could be a great character in a book? Normally she’s trash or just evil. Here, she is... complicated. - Cole. Love him to hate him.
Cons: - Minor editing issues. - Plot is a touch predictable, though there are moments that mix it up.
First person, single POV (come on, we need multiple here!), PNR, slow burn RH, MMMMMF, cliffhanger.
This trilogy gets better and better. So many twists and action in Eve's story as she gets closer to finding out what she really is. I loved the relationships she builds with the other female characters as she begins to coming into her own identity and powers. Supportive, unifying and protective...it's a wonderful strong female heroine. I feel like we still are only getting bits and pieces of the brothers. They are getting more temperate as they grow older but I feel like Liam is the brother we know the best. The storyline itself is very compelling with the mystery of the Other World and the rules of its society. Lots of surprises and clues dropped throughout that I needed to devour as I can't seem able to put this book down. I'm thrilled that I chose to read this trilogy after all of the books were available so that I didn't have to wait for my thirst for more to be quenched. On to the last story!
This second book is showing elements of the current U.S. societal economic climate. Don’t how I feel about projected political views, even though I agree, in my PNR. There wasn’t as much character and relationship building in this either. I’m given a glimpse and then they disappear. Something was missing for me and I don’t know how else to explain it. Did I just forget the character purpose of the unicorn lady or was it just a snippet to segue into book 3? I will be continuing on as I feel invested now.
I enjoyed the story, I would have liked more of it. I enjoyed reading about Eve and the brothers and their individual and collective growth. The sex scenes were far too gratuitous, they felt like they were just thrown in and I felt like I was missing out on the story during the sex scenes. And as a side note there were far more typos and errors in this book than the first and it was distracting. All that being said I still really enjoyed the book as I gave it 4 stars. It's a good story, I just wish there was more of it.
Gaaah.. I can't. First book was promising but just the first chapter of this already wanted me to pull all my hair out. Suddenly there is love but they had like three conversations together. Excuse me while I go barf up this nonexistent emotions.
It's safe to say I won't be continuing this series.
This book was amazing! There were some twists I was not expecting! I love watching Eve’s relationships with the Nights form and evolve. And that freaking ending! OMG. I need the next one now!!!
The novel ended on an exciting and intriguing note, but honestly, I was incredibly disappointed throughout the rest of the novel. The big to-do in this novel is that Liam is charged with stealing a dragon egg. First off, the editing was appalling, almost like the novel was dictated with the dragon software and not edited at all - e.g., "view" used instead of few, or repeated words. These mistakes might have been overlooked if the novel had been richer, fuller, more developed. Other reviewers said they thought it was "rushed", and I have to agree. There was A LOT missing from this novel. It was just bare bones, almost like there was an outline but nothing was filled in. I know fiction isn't meant to focus on the mundane minutia of everyday life, but since this is a totally new world for Eve, it would have been more compelling if we knew how she spent her days. No tv, no radio, no cell phones, etc. WHAT DOES SHE DO WITH HER TIME? Oh, and look! In the second to last chapter, we learn that she paints in her spare time. Yeah, great, why couldn't we hear about that earlier? Also, see my progress note about her non-existent relationship with Alina that suddenly turns in to "Alina is like my own child". WHAT?! The bit about her and the brothers' magic was also skinny, almost like there was a chapter missing between the last book and this one. When the Water Dragon comments that the Water Druid was getting his magic back, that was news to me as well. I even went back and re-read the previous book because I thought I had missed something. Nope. It just wasn't there. Same with the romance. Lot's of new situations, totally out of the blue, with no discussion, just off-hand comments. Relationship development was seriously lacking. As a crime mystery, the plot is still thin, but the book does okay. But as a romance novel, it fails miserably. I'll still read the next novel because I need to know what happens to the characters. Not sure if it's the last novel, but if there's no improvement, I definitely won't read further.
I liked many aspects of the world building and the plot to be refreshing but I found several things hard to get through: - The relationship still felt like friendships with sudden moments of lust. It honestly didn't feel like there was a "slow burn" build up of intimacy, or affection obvious outside of a few moments where the physical quickly escalated. - Also, the night firm is starting to feel less like a law firm and more like a detective agency, which does not quite line up with how it's introduced in book 1. - My other criticism was that Eve's curiosity was selective and illogical. Like she is really dogged and smart and observant about finding clues to whatever case she is working on but never seems to ask questions or pursue obvious leads into her own background when they come up. Like why does she never ask about the unicorn lady who was at their firm in book 1 !?!? And why she is not in every spare moment devouring the brothers' library with her photographic memory to learn more about this new world and any clues to her origins and weird powers? - And, (*spoiler alert*) I found the brothers' judgemental attitude towards their long lost brother to be completely absurd considering their own past crimes and guilt. It seems unrealistic and overly harsh when his crime seems to pale in comparison to theirs... - Lastly, there was an awkward/weird scene that really confused me...The scene where one of the brothers overhears Eve and Adam speaking and then continues eavesdropping after she falls asleep and then suddenly bursts in while she has been napping for a while (?) and confronts her. The sequence of events just made no sense. I read it multiple times but it just didn't flow at all.
I loved the first book and this one is good too, however at times it felt both slow and rushed, Eve just seems to be changing into a Mary Sue. The inner dialogue was getting boring and the progress of the book seems so slow, on the other hand some key storylines were glossed over and I hope this gets resolved in the next book.
The story continues. We get to see a bit darker side to Eve. I was hoping to get to know the brothers a bit better and for their romances to develop more. And while that does happen to an extent everything is overshadowed by the arrival of Cole and the return of Adam. Not a fan. Just another manipulator playing mind-games. Apart from that the magical world of Otherworld gets explored further in this book. Both the beautiful and the ugly. There are quite a few reveals, surprises and twists in this story. Some surprising, some less so and yet all of them "fit"/ make sense within the story as a whole and everything we knew previously (i hate those impossibly far-fetched twists with no purpose other than to shock the audience).
Sadly this second book failed to enchant me in the way the first book did. I only kept reading, well, because curious minds want to know and I wanted to figure out Cole's secrets. By the end of it I wasn't even sure if I even wanted to continue with the series.
I was hoping for more character development in this book but the only person who seemed to grow was Eve. Elijah and Sebastian were basically pushed to the side and although Derek was mentioned a few times he was also relegated to secondary character status. The book was mostly about Eve and a mysterious new character. Eve has suddenly come into her powers and without much difficulty seems able to control them. I just found the majority of the storyline very trite. There was no real development in the relationship between Eve and the Night brothers. The story needed to be fleshed out more. It felt as if the writers were just rushing to the finish line. A good proof reading would also help. There were editorial mistakes on nearly every page. Hopefully the final book in the series will be better.
This one felt like such a letdown after the first book. I was surprised by the lack of time with all the guys. There is little to no progression with relationships since they rarely talk. The world is interesting and there is a lot of good here, but it just didn't work for me as well as book one.
I felt super meh about this book. The first book had a lot of promise and this was kind of a disappointment in comparison. I even feel like the three star is somewhat generous for how I’m feeling right now.
I AM THE STORM picked up right where the first book left off. Eve meets Adam again after believing he’s dead (did I ever mention how fucking weird it was that the twin siblings were named after the biblical couple?). With the added reveal that Adam killed Liams baby mama and their son... it’s a lot for a girl to take in. So what does she do??? She keeps it a secret and lets that shit fester.
This book went around in circles on the principles of good and evil, light and dark, and right and wrong. Literally, it was just discussions and inner monologue angsting about so many fucking problems revolving around these themes. I was completely over them once I got a third way through the book, and basically suffered through them the rest of the way.
The relationships didn’t develop much at all except with Cole, the missing fifth Night brother. Meets the dude, instantly in love and trusts him, bangs him, and then shit happens at the end and she’s still all over him. Sighhhhhh. Then again, Liam did get wayyy ahead of the others as well but I felt like it was a given with his focus in the main plot of the dragon egg and explosion. Didn’t seem necessary for him to have been dragged into that.... or make sense really, but whatever.
Everything also felt forced and rushed. The plot, the relationships, the climax and resolution... just disappointed overall. I wish certain plot points were more explained and elaborated because they were actually interesting. For instance, the Collector. That could have been done better.
The twist at the end? I didn’t expect that so it was actually intriguing enough for me to consider getting the next book, but meh. I’m really not feeling it. I barely got through this one. I might consider it in the future but this book definitely suffered from the second-book syndrome. Everything just fell apart.
Picking up right where the first book left off, Eve is forced to confront a person from her past that she never thought would happen. But moments later an explosion occurs at the festival and chaos ensues. Are the brothers and family alright? What is going on? Will the fires be put out in time? And who was that mysterious man she couldn’t keep her eyes of moments before? So many questions and when Liam gets accused of stealing one of the most precious things in the Otherworld, the Night Firm needs to do whatever it can to clear Liam of these charges.
The past and all its mysteries are brought to the surface in the book. I loved learning more about the Night Brothers’ history, whether it be good or bad. The most interesting part though has been learning more and more about Eve’s abilities. She confuses me at times and can be rather contradictory and bias but man does this woman fight the good fight. The things she learns about herself, the relationships she has with all the brothers and possibly even the fates themselves made me want to know what’s next. Plus, I definitely enjoyed the major increase in steamy scenes this time around. Ready for the last book!