Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hawke and Sienna's book! Like everyone else who reads this series, I was really anticipating this one. Hawke and Sienna's relationship has been brewing in the background of this series since the very first novel. Sienna is an X-cardnial Psy. X Psy aren't known for having long life spans, their powers typically cause them to die a fiery death long before they reach their mid-twenties. So when Sienna feels her powers slowly slipping out of her control, she knows she'll eventually have to leave SnowDancer or risk taking the entire pack down with her. In the meantime, she's determined to keep trying to reinforce her control, but the angst filled relationship she has with Hawke is not helping matters. Hawke has always caused her emotions to erupt into chaos and the confusing signals he's been sending her has just been adding fuel to that fire. Sienna has loved him for a hella long time and everyone at SnowDancer seems to be hellbent on shoving them together. Unfortunately, Hawke refuses to act on his attraction and Sienna is done waiting around for him to change his mind.

Oh man, I loved this story to bits. Hawke has been a favorite side character of mine ever since he showed up in Slave to Sensation and went out of his way to annoy Lucas. I really loved seeing that playfulness in his character expanded in this story. There's some really cute scenes centered on him "playing" with Sienna and I loved that she was able to hold her own against him. However, in the beginning of this book his stubbornness concerning her was pretty annoying. Hawke had a kind of "kid in the playground" mentality about Sienna. He didn't want to play with her, but no one else was allowed to play with her either. This combined with their relationship throughout the other books, made me really wish that Singh hadn't gone the virgin route with Sienna. Going into this book, I had hoped that Sienna would've slept with Kit or someone before this story. It was kind of a damper to see Sienna able to match Hawke everywhere and then suddenly play the shy and naive virgin in the bedroom. She eventually gets out of that, but it still broke the tone of the rest of the book to have to sit through that "first-time" scene.

Aside from the main romance, this one also had the benefit of a pretty great action side story. The Psy are organizing some pretty brutal attacks against SnowDancer in an attempt to weaken them so they can eventually be wiped out. The suspense of organizing defensive maneuvers and counter attacks was pretty awesome. I also really enjoyed that this installment seemed bloodier than the others in the series, it made the brewing war seem more imminent and important than it has been in the other novels.

My only real complaint is that I feel like Lara and Walker got short changed. Like Sienna and Hawke, their story has been quietly building over the course of a few books, but they got slotted as the secondary romance in this one. Lara and Walker's relationship was nicely done, but it faded a lot into the background in comparison to the other major plot threads such as: Hawke and Sienna's relationship, the Psy attacks, and Lucas and Sasha's baby. Because of this I really wish that they had been given their own book or at least their own short story.

I would recommend this book if you're a fan, but not to someone looking to start the series. This book really needs to be worked up to in order to appreciate the relationships and events that are at the center of the story.

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