Unwrapping a Review of IMMORTAL UNCHAINED, book 25 in the Argeneau Series by Lynsay Sands

I’ve been reading the Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands for years and so was very excited about the next installment, IMMORTAL UNCHAINED – book 25 – with the hope of learning more about the evil Dr. Dressler and what he has in store for the immortals. However, I had truly hoped this one would live up to the standard set by the rest of the series and stories of the Dante Twins. Sadly, I was somewhat disappointed.

***eARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest and unscripted review

Blurb for IMMORTAL UNCHAINED:

Ever since Domitian Argenis recognized Sarita as his life mate, he’s been waiting for the perfect moment to claim her. Those fantasies did not include him being chained to a table in a secret lab or both of them being held hostage by a mad scientist. Somehow, they have to escape…

Sarita has seen some crazy things as a cop, but nothing to rival Domitian. A vampire? Seriously? But his healing ability, incredible powers, and their mind-blowing physical connection—none of it should be possible, yet her body knows differently. Now, not only do they have to save each other, but other innocent lives are at stake. Failure is not an option, for Sarita intends that Domitian show her exactly what an eternity of pleasure feels like…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Domitian Argenis has ‘volunteered’ to be hired by Dr. Dressler on his hidden island as his new chef in order to discover the whereabouts and condition of the missing immortals. However, it seems that Dressler is one step ahead of Domitian and as soon as he is on the helicopter, he’s drugged just as the other immortals had been and taken prisoner.

Sarita Reyes lost her mother to kidnappers as a child. After her father and grandfather’s deaths, she feels she has no one and nothing except her work as a police officer in Canada. When she learns that the last of her family, her grandmother whom she’s never met, has taken a fall and is in the hospital, she travels to her grandmother’s employer’s island off the coast of Venezuela to be with her.  Once there, she discovers her grandmother isn’t there but she can’t seem to get any information. When she tries to discover what’s going on at this strange compound, she learns far too much about the horrible ‘experiments’ being conducted by Dr. Dressler. The mad man drugs her and when she awakes, she’s in a beautiful ‘honeymoon style’ house with a gorgeous man who needs blood to survive and claims to be her life mate. Strange is an overstatement for the turn her life has taken and it’s about to get stranger.

I had a lot of problems with this installment of the Argeneau series. Lynsay did a great job as always about explaining the immortals and even managed to create the proper back story so that if someone was new to the series, they would be able to read this without being too lost. However, it was the first half to two-thirds of the book that left me wanting to put it down and give up on it. It was slow, uninteresting, and had me chomping at the bit for something, anything to happen. It wasn’t until Sarita and Domitian actually started ‘talking’ to each other that clarification came as to what might be going on and then after arriving back at the compound, the real action of the story began but by that time, the book was nearly done. At that point, I felt the book was rushed to a conclusion…a conclusion that, although not a cliffhanger, still leaves us with wondering what comes next.

IMMORTAL UNCHAINED still gives us some steam, even some of Lynsay Sand’s delightful humor, and banter between characters, she even brings in a kind of freaky-type science fiction aspect which I really enjoyed but I couldn’t help but think she came across as kind of lost in this one. Perhaps if we’d been dropped into the story further in and then came back to the starting point, it would have worked better – kind of a ‘four days earlier’ setup.

IMMORTAL UNCHAINED, book 25 in the incredible Argeneau series by Lynsay Sands is still a book that longtime fans of the series will want to read but stick with it, if you do, it will suddenly explode with action, fascination, and we even get to meet up with several characters from past books. I really liked that. It was good to see them again. If you haven’t read any Argeneaus…do, absolutely…but don’t start with this one unless you read RUNAWAY VAMPIRE and IMMORTAL NIGHTS, the two books that setup the Dressler storyline. I am still a fan of this series and as always, looking forward to the next one, IMMORTALLY YOURS, which by the way, sounds great and very much an Argeneau.

Happy Reading Everyone!

IMMORTAL UNCHAINED, an Argeneau novel by Lynsay Sands, Avon Romance, releasing March 28, 2017 in print and ebook formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobobooks.