I'd do nothing but reading if I could (ok, maybe eat some great food, buy some fancy shoes between two books...oh, and spend some quality time with the gorgeous guy I married while I am on reading-break anyway...)
If you ever started the Anita-Blake-Series and loved the first few books and then watched it slowly going down the drain, then you know how this feels, times ten.
We have all those super duper hot and beautiful guys. Those gorgeous, otherworldly handsome hunks. Who - what a coincidence! - all want Vervain. But not only because of her exterieur, no. It is her good heart and golden characters that attracts them (Anita Blake and Merry Gentry moments: She saves formerly abused shifters and they ALL want the heroine, because she is warm and caring and sooo much better than any other woman).
Did I mention the long hair on the guys? The waist-long hair?
Oh, and if you hoped that there would be nice female character in there? Have a think again. Most female characters who are in any way noticeable in the story are evil. They are jealous of Vervain, they are abusers, they are despicable.
And Vervain merged into this super Mary-Sue who is better, more loving, more caring, funnier, sexier and simply more wonderful than any other woman or goddess ever invented.
It made me sick. Really, really sick to see how this wonderful story and this wonderful character developed into a stinking brown pile of s*it right there.
And also the constant lusting. The rape threats, the sexualisation of pretty much everything. Where the only explanation for not lusting after someone at the first meeting is, oh, I am his mother, of course! What other reason could there be not to lust after him? (He is, guess what, totally beautiful...)
I mean if she has no qualms about having had a fling with the stepson, we are not so far off...
I am out of here.
And really sad about it.