‘Fear is a more powerful motivator than hate.’

Title: Dark Whispers
Rating: 3.5 ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Spice: ✖️
Tropes: Slow-burn romance, Whodunit Mystery, UF Sassy Heroine, Age Gap, Crime Fighting Duo, Close proximity, Protective Alpha.

Blurb: The Supernatural Summit is about to start at the DeVane Hotel in London, bringing together vampires, werewolves, ghouls, gremlins, and pixies. It is a chance to change the world for the better, but there are protestors camped outside and rumours about one of the delegates. When a dead body is discovered, it is only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and Emma has to find the murderer and find them quickly.

Trigger warnings: Graphic Death, Prejudices Against Supes, Guns, Self Harm, Suicide, Accidental drowning, Self Hatred, Stabbing


This is the fifth book in the series and I think it’s one of the weakest plot wise. Its been six months since Detective Owen has been in charge. He isn’t a bad guy, but he struggles to understand the Supe community. He doesn’t like the fact that Emma is a Supe herself and has more of an insight into supernatural matters than he does. He is over-enthusiastic in his efforts to uphold the letter of the law, very strict, black and white, there’s no grey area, right or wrong. He’s not what I would have pictured for the leader of Supe Squad, but I could be biased as I believe Emma was doing such a good job before he came along. That and he actually said yes to allow Emma to take the fall if the Summit failed and she didn’t find the murderer. They’re supposed to be a team. He’s more interested in making moon eyes at Liza.

We’re following Emma and the crew in this one as she tries to pull off a Supernatural Summit, an event that brings together vampires, werewolves, ghouls, gremlins, and pixies, with the aim of improving relations between supes and humans. It should be smooth sailing, but there are protestors camped outside not wanting the Supes to thrive based on their own fear. When a dead body is discovered, it is only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and Emma has to find the murderer before the humans blame the supernatural and make the relations between Supe and humans worse than they have ever been.

While the supernatural summit was an interesting concept, the murder investigation didn't quite hit the mark. The human scamming supes thing didn’t catch my attention as much as previous investigations had. If anything, it was semi-boring. The lack of plot twists and hijinks made it feel like the investigation was just done to drag things out. However,I did enjoy meeting the pixies, the little we did see of them on the page.

Now, let’s get down to what annoyed me the most in this book. We have been reading about Lukas and Emma's romance and it’s been building up for four whole books, but in this one, he gives her a ‘Tears of Blood’ necklace, which is like an engagement ring in the vampire world. Lukas wanted their relationship to be known as more than casual. It’s usually worn by the Lady of the vampires, and he’s basically showing the entire world she’s taken. I understand the sentiment behind it, but it came out of freaking nowhere!.

Where's the actual romance leading up to this? All the developments seem to have happened off-page, which is a bummer because I wanted to see their first everything. It's like they went from "did he say I love you?" in the last book to "be my wife" in a matter of weeks. And honestly, the chemistry fell flat to me. I mean, if they're supposed to be the love of each other's lives, you'd expect some build-up, right? But there was nothing. And Emma's acceptance of the necklace made me roll my eyes so hard. I mean, I barely trust Lukas myself, so how can she? It seemed so out of character for her to accept it from him. Especially when she had to repeatedly tell herself she trusts him during certain circumstances. If we had seen the build up between the two, maybe this scene would make more sense and wouldn’t feel horribly rushed. We started off so well with a slow burn, getting to know each other only to end up skipping entire parts of their entire relationship.

Anyways, onto the next!