Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld Series)

The men and women of the Otherworld – witches, werewolves, demons, vampires – live unseen among us. Only now a reckless killer has torn down the wall, trapping one very human woman in the supernatural crossfire.

Robyn moved to LA after her husband died to try to put some distance between herself and the life they had together. And the challenges of her job as the PR consultant to a Paris Hilton wannabe are pretty distracting. But then her celebutante is gunned down in a night club, and Robyn is suddenly the prime suspect. The two people most determined to clear her are her old friend, the half-demon tabloid reporter Hope Adams, and a homicide detective with an uncanny affinity for the dead.

Soon Robyn finds herself in the heart of a world she never even knew existed – and which she was safer knowing nothing about . . .

It is not even good to consider how out of order I am reading this series. This is book nine, but I am actually not finished reading two of the older books in the series. It all happened because I really did not like Dime Store Magic because Paige DROVE me crazy! So, I was hesitant about reading Industrial Magic, so I skipped way ahead to No Humans Involved. It has just been a jumbled reading order since then. After I finished this book, I read Haunted. That would be book 5 in the series. Yes, I have quite the reading system.

So, this is a story that centres around Hope Adams. She is actually a pretty interesting character. She does not drive me crazy and she has quite the boyfriend! Karl Marsten has been mentioned in the books before, though, don't ask me where because trying to remember which book is which is complicated when you can't read the books in order like a 'normal' person. I also just recently read the short story 'Chaotic' where Hope and Karl meet for the first time. My thought process for that was why on earth would Armstrong include what, to me, is an important part of the series in a short story? Not good marketing because I very rarely have any interest in the rest of the short stories in an anthology, so it takes me forever to buy them.

Getting back on topic. Thank god for Hope because Robyn, her best friend and another main character in the novel, has a real knack for getting herself into severe trouble. She makes one bad choice after another in this book and then, the next thing she knows, she is a murder suspect. We also know more than she does about what is going on, so maybe I wasn't as sympathetic as I should be, but she does seem to make the wrong decision every time. Mind you, if Robyn wasn't in trouble; than Karl and Hope would not have to save her. It also turns out to be a lot more complicated than that, of course. For those that don't know. Hope is a half-demon and Karl is a werewolf. It's quite the match-up. Hope feeds off chaos vibes and Karl's life is chaos. It makes it hard for her to always do what needs to be done because she gets caught up in what is going on around her. She is learning, though, but at the same time her powers are getting stronger. Hope is one of my favourite Women of the Otherworld characters, though, so I always look forward to learning more about her.

I probably should also mention the necromancer. He is a police officer who sees the ghosts of the victims he is sent to investigate (sometimes). It means that people think he is crazy because he looks like he is walking around talking to himself. Add in the fact that he has somehow ended up with a parter that is a ghost, and it makes for an interesting sequence of events. The ghost turns out to be important to the story, but for a while I think he is just there for comedic relief. This really was another great edition to the Women of the Otherworld series. Armstrong sure knows what she is doing and pulls all the different characters off well. Plus, each book tends to focus on one female parnormal character, so while it is a series it is really different everytime. My plan is to be caught up in this series by the end of September when the new book is released. Wish me luck!

On another note... I am really not a huge fan of the covers for this series. They just seem very provactive for a series about strong, female characters. Maybe that is the point, but they just seem like romance novel covers to me.

My thanks to Random House for a copy of this book! Click here to read an excerpt.