• Characters
  • Plot
  • Writing Style
  • Heat

CARA AND THE DRACA
By Louisa Kelley
Series: Daughters of Draca, #2
Publisher: Loose Id
Release Date: Jan 2012
Length: 37,697 words

Cara is haunted by the recent memories of a warehouse explosion that took the life of her best friend and caught her in the blast. Urged by friends to experiment with tattoo to cover the burns scars on her shoulder, Cara heads for the mysterious tattoo shop in Portland everyone is talking about.

Aedhan, the gorgeous tattoo master, leaves her senses reeling and her knees weak. Just the touch of his talented hands brings relief and a sense of release from her pain. His charming, eccentric ways, combined with his tangerine hair and odd accent, create an intoxicating mix. To her delight, the incredible tattoo he expertly lays over her scar hides everything–and makes her long for more of his healing touch.

Soon she is pulled into an erotic journey of unimagined delight, terror and transformation. Dragons? In Portland? Really? Oozing sex and magic? Yet, something isn’t quite adding up. Is Aedhan really telling her the truth about what he’s doing in that shop? But she’s so crazy in lust and wonder, it’s hard to care.

Shape-shifter Aedhan fully intends to follow the rules of his secret mission, number one being no sex with the human women in Portland. Then Cara shows up at his shop and her sweetness and delightful freckles almost stops his heart. When he perceives the sorrow in her life, he is consumed with the need to know more. Who has hurt her? After he gets a taste of her blood on his tattoo needles and discovers the extra special something in her fluids, he decides he must see Cara again, even if it means breaking the rules. And that’s when things start to go terribly wrong…or perfectly right for Cara and the Draca.

The romance of Louisa Kelley’s dragon-shifters continues in CARA AND THE DRACA, the second book of the Daughters of Draca series.  The blurb above gives a good synopsis of the story, so I’ll keep mine brief.  Readers were first introduced to the yummy, orange-haired hero, Aedhan, in the first book.  The Dracan bad boy is now in the human world working as a tattoo artist.  But what his clients don’t know is that the ink he uses is blessed with Dracan magic, and his mission is part of a grand plan to save his race.  He gives a tattoo to a young woman named Cara to cover a terrible burn scar on her arm. He is immediately drawn to her, and he can tell from her blood that she carries Draca DNA.  She is one of the human daughters of Draca his kind is searching for.

I enjoyed the fantasy world created in the the first book, and in this second installment I think the characters had more emotional depth and the plot had more layers.  Cara and Aedhan had some very *hot* chemistry between them.  I liked the magical tattoo shop premise and the mysterious ink used to mark unsuspecting humans.  I’ll be interested to see where the author takes that in the next book.  The story’s pacing was fast, and the plot held my attention.  The sub plot that involved the explosion which caused Cara’s scar needed to be explained in more detail, in particular the whos and whys behind it, though I did like how it tied in with the main story line.

Magical and seductive.  Fans of erotic fantasy romance will be captivated by Louisa Kelley’s world of the Draca.

Reviewed By: Diana