Each month beginning March 1st, 2012, challenge members will read or re-read the title for that month. In addition, challenge members will either post a review, their reading experience, character castings or anything else related to that title. You have freedom to have fun with your monthly post so be creative! Seeing as this series is 13 novels long, this challenge will last 13 months.

As this challenge started in March and it is already late August, you can tell that I am a little behind…

Haunted by Kelley Armstrong, UK edition cover

Haunted (Women of the Otherworld #5)
by Kelley Armstrong

Published: 26th May 2005

Eve Levine – half-demon, black witch and devoted mother – has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can’t be killed again – which comes in handy when you’ve made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn’t too bad – all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she’ll be happy.

But fate – or more exactly, the Fates – have other plans. Eve owes them a favour, and they’ve just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy – previous hunters have been sent made in the process. As if that’s not problem enough, it turns out that the only way to stop her is with an angel’s sword. And Eve’s no angel . . .

As with both Bitten, Stolen, Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic, this is not going to be a “normal” review.

In Haunted we get our first real introduction to Eve Levine. Sure she’s appeared in previous books, but she hasn’t had much page time, and as such has remained rather mysterious up to this point. There are only three things that we know for certain about her: she’s a black witch, she loves her daughter, and she had a long/short enough relationship with Kristoff Nast to have Savannah. Eve is everything I expected her to be, and yet completely different.

Eve is the star of Haunted, and I have to admit that I really enjoyed her as the protagonist. I also enjoyed the fact that occasionally Armstrong slipped in a chapter from Nix’s – or one of her dupes – point of view. It broke up the narrative, and gave some interesting insight into Nix. I also enjoyed the fact that whilst the story stayed mainly in  the afterlife, we did get a quick peek at some familiar faces.

The plot of Haunted is of a similar style to that of Bitten – part bad guy chasing/hunting, part romance. This really helped to cement Eve as a complex character for me. She is very dedicated to the task that the Fates set her, but at the same time she’s blind to what is in front of her. The ending of this book was particularly poignant, I thought.