Author: J R Ward
Series: Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 5
Publisher: Piatkus Books
Published: October 2010
532 pages

The ruthless and brilliant brother Vishous possesses a destructive curse and a frightening ability to see the future. As a member of the Brotherhood, he has no interest in love or emotion, only the battle with the Lessening Society. But when a mortal injury puts him in the care of a human surgeon, Dr. Jane Whitcomb compels him to reveal his inner pain and taste true pleasure for the first time-until a destiny he didn’t choose takes him into a future that does not include her…

Another fantastic installment to the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

This one is Vishous’ book. After being told the horrifying news that he has to become the ‘Primale’ of the vampire race (i.e. he is required to mate with the chosen females to ensure the survival of the warrior race) Vishous goes out to take his anger out in a hunt for lessers. Unfortunately, he takes a bullet to the chest and ends up on the operating table of Jane Whitcomb in a human hospital! From thereon the story gets better and better as V’s brother’s bust him out of the hospital before the sun can come up and before the staff notice his weird anatomy! Only problem is, V insists on bringing Jane home with him..!

I LOVED the storyline between V and Jane…it was developed so naturally throughout the book…and certainly wasn’t love at first sight! Jane is one of the stronger female roles of this series and it really was nice to see her take control of the relationship.

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Author: J R Ward
Series: Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 4
Publisher: Piatkus books
Published: February 2011
480 pages

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there’s a deadly turf war raging between vampires and their slayers. There exists a secret bound of brothers like no other-six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Possessed by a deadly beast Rhage is the most dangerous of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

Butch O’Neal is a fighter by nature. A hard living, ex-homicide cop, he’s the only human ever to be allowed in the inner circle of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And he wants to go even deeper into the vampire world- to engage in the turf war with the lessers. He’s got nothing to lose. His heart belongs to a female vampire, an aristocratic beauty who’s way out of his league. If he can’t have her, then at least he can fight side by side with the Brothers…

Fate curses him with the very thing he wants. When Butch sacrifices himself to save a civilian vampire from the slayers, he falls prey to the darkest force in the war. Left for dead, found by a miracle, the Brotherhood calls on Marissa to bring him back, though even her love may not be enough to save him…

I’ve been on a bit of a Black Dagger Brotherhood binge lately. Straight after I finished book 3 I started book 4. This one I don’t think is as good as the others, but I still believe that its a good and necessary edition to the series.

This tells the story of Butch and Marrissa, who’s story originally began in the first book. Nothing much happend with them in books 2 and 3 but in book 4 they are brought to the forfront of the storyline. Butch (or Cop as the brothers refer to him) is human. He is the only human (other than Mary) who is let into the inner circle of the brotherhood. And although he was ok with this for a while, eventually he gets sick of feeling like a ‘pet’ and wants to help them in their eradication of the lessers. However when he gets brutally tortured by the lessers for information on the brotherhood, his wish of becomming involved becomes a nightmareish reality and he gets quite a lot more than he bargained for!

This storyline I liked. It was nice to let Butch have his limelight and show his worth. However, what I didn’t really care for was his love interest, Marissa. Her personality was quite annoying and I become exasperated with her. She would go back and forth between loving Butch and being happy to then falling out with him for the smallest reason and walking out. This happened too much and I got bored with it. This is why I have given Lover Revealed 3.5 stars.

I like how these books always plant the seeds for future books. And that is what it felt like the purpose of this book was for.. to plant the beginnings of more storylines to come. I guess you could say this one is a bit of a gap filler. So with that in mind, I think it accomplished this very well. We were given more insight into the mind of Vishous (whose book comes next), with his crazy sex life and his visions of the future and other problems. We got a couple of chapters from Rehvenge’s POV.. And also the story of John Matthews is progressed nicely. Seeing him growing up and learning about the brotherhood and girls and fighting, and also dealing with the tradegy of what happened at the end of book 3, I felt Lover Revealed did a great job of progressing his storyline.

Lastly, I feel I need to point out what my favourite thing about this book was. And that was the ‘bromance’. Yes, the bromance. I’m of course speaking of Butch and Vishious. Their relationship is hillarous, clever, loyal and quite lovely. I want to see more of this in future books!

So as I say, not a bad book, in terms of books in general, Lover Revealed is very good, but in comparison to the first three, to me anyway, I found it quite average.