Review: Red Hot Fury by Kasey Mackenzie

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Hell hath nothing worse than a Fury scorned...

As a Fury, Marissa Holloway belongs to an Arcane race that has avenged wrongdoing since time immemorial. As Boston’s Chief Magical Investigator for the past five years, she’s doing what she was born to: solving supernatural crimes.

It’s far from business as usual when the body of one of Riss’s sister Furies washes up in Boston harbor. Riss discovers that the corpse’s identity has been magically altered, but as soon as she reports her findings, she’s immediately—and inexplicably—suspended from the her job. Then a human assassin makes an attempt on her life, and Riss starts to realize that someone may be trying to stir up strife between mortals and Arcanes.

When a Fury gets mad, she gets even, and Riss is determined to untangle this case. Without the support of the mortal PD, Riss turns to the one man she can trust to watch her back—shapeshifting Warhound Scott Murphy. But since Scott is also Riss’s ex, she’ll have to keep a tight leash on more than just the supernatural rage that feeds her power as they try to solve a murder—and stop a war…

Ok, let me start off by saying that I really liked that Ms. Mackenzie went for something different here. We have Furies, we have harpies, we have warhounds, we have sidhe and we have genetic tampering that leads to mixed breeds and all sorts of mayhem. The fact that there were harpies at all made me happy because let's face it, you don't see them used much in UF. Ms. Mackenzie also had a unique take on the relationship between furies and harpies and again, I appreciated the originality of it.

While I'm listing the positives, let me throw out that a lot of people are going to like that there's a semi steamy love interest in the protag's ex, Scott, who's a warhound. There's a lot of action and there's the question of who's behind all the mayhem going on. This will be enough for some people, and that's fine. Now, I'll tell you why it just didn't work for me.

Unfortunately, the writing was not the book's strong point. There was a lot of info dumping and the characters often acted like they'd been created yesterday. They have lived in this world their whole lives and several of them are supposed to be badasses that have been around the block a few times and yet, they're clueless most of the time. And it was so very dramatic. All the time. It was kind of exhausting, really.

The main character, Riss. We're told she's a badass. We're told that a lot. We don't actually SEE a lot of badassery coming from her. We see a lot of bitchiness and jumping to conclusions and convenient cluelessness, but no, we don't see a lot of badassness. I know that I was SUPPOSED to sympathize with Riss, but I didn't. She could be nice, at times, but mostly she was an immature brat that had little care for anyone that wasn't her, or wasn't a fury. Cuz no one can understand the weight of the EPIC BADASSNESS she carries but a sister fury.

I wanted to love this book. I really did. The author is a lovely woman who has been very generous in sending me an ARC to review and when told that I probably would be giving it a lower grade, she said there were no strings attached when she sent me the ARC and she would never ask me not to post a review. I respect that. I respect her for it and I respect that she had a fresh take on the UF genre, in my opinion.

I had a lot of issues with this book, but that doesn't mean that other people aren't going to enjoy this one. My girl, Wendy, reviewed Red Hot Fury and loved it. Link to review here. So, as you can see, I am not the only opinion out there.

Final grade: C-. The writing was really a D, but the fact that the author had some good concepts and cool ideas really brought the grade up.

Red Hot Fury releases June 29.

There will be a sequel coming out. I believe the title is Green Eyed Envy. So, if you enjoy this one, there will be more to come.....