Review: ‘Night Reigns’ Dianne Duvall

Ami isn’t much for trusting strangers. She has a hard time trusting anyone. But she’s no coward, and she’s no pushover in the protection department either. So when she comes across a mysterious warrior taking on eight deranged vampires on his own, she doesn’t hesitate to save his bacon. Of course, that was before she realized what one little rescue would get her into…

Marcus Grayden has been an Immortal protector of humanity for eight hundred years, and he’s not interested in backup. From the moment Ami arrives in his life, he can’t deny that she’s strong, smart, and extremely skilled at watching his back. But she’s also destroying his protective solitude and stirring desires he can’t bear to awaken. After all, whatever her secrets, how can she defeat death itself?

Okay, first of all, let’s talk about Night Reigns’ front cover. The cover model has a shirt on, right? I’m not hallucinating, am I? In all my years of reviewing paranormal romance, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fully clothed man on a front cover.

Me when I saw the front cover.

Anyway, moving on from the front cover. Night Reigns is the second book in Dianne Duvall’s Immortal Guardians series and I absolutely loved it. I feel like I say this every time I read a sequel in a series, but I actually enjoyed this book more than I did the previous, which is saying a lot considering I adored Darkness Dawns.

As with Darkness Dawns, Night Reigns turns some of paranormal romance’s most common tropes on their head. For one, Ami is a badass protagonist. Right from the start, she demonstrates that she can more than stand her ground. She saves Marcus’ life on multiple occasions, as well as her own. She’s nothing like the damsels in distress populating this genre. Another thing that I really like about her character is the fact that her PTSD (it’s not described as such, but it’s perhaps the best way to describe it) doesn’t just magically disappear when she meets Marcus. I’ve read paranormal romance books where characters dealing with past trauma seem to be instantly ‘cured’ upon meeting their love interest and it’s a disservice to real people trying to recover from trauma. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, perhaps it’s simply a case of lazy writing, but when this happens it always makes me feel as though the author is suggesting that there should come a point when someone simply gets over their trauma. There’s no set recovery time for trauma, though, and I love the fact that this is addressed in the book, even if it was inadvertently on Dianne Duvall’s part.

Now, moving onto Marcus. Marcus, being the absolute sweetheart that he is, doesn’t just simply acknowledge that Ami is dealing with past trauma, he also tries his best to help her through it. This fact alone puts him in my list of top ten paranormal romance guys. The fact that he, like Roland, has a cat as well? Hell, that puts him in my top five. Like I said before, this book turns so many paranormal romance tropes on their head and Marcus, like Ami, is one such example. He’s kind, thoughtful and gentle and a far cry from the stereotypical arrogant paranormal romance man.

When I read Darkness Dawns, I felt like it was a great book to begin the series. It does a great job of setting up the world in which it’s set and it introduces readers to the series’ main cast of characters. However, from a story standpoint, I prefer Night Reigns. It’s in this book that the ongoing story arc begins, plus there’s no weird, convenient plot twist at the end.

I’ve already bought book three in the series and I’m pleased to report that there’s abs aplenty on the cover.

Have you read Night Reigns or any of Dianne Duvall’s other books? Let me know in the comments.

Want to read Night Reigns? You can buy your copy through Amazon or Hive.

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