Review: Kiss of Snow

KISS OF SNOW (Psy-Changeling #10)
Nalini Singh
Paranormal Romance
415 pages
Berkley Sensation/Penguin
Available May 31st
Received from publisher for review

This review contains NO spoilers.

THE STORY
Sienna Lauren and her family defected from the PsyNet and came seeking refuge with the SnowDancer wolves fully expecting they would be killed.

They all hoped the wolves' love of children might save Sienna's younger brother and cousin and would simply end up destroying the three eldest Laurens. Thoroughly shocking them all, alpha Hawke spared all 5 of them and brought them into the changeling way of life, and her impossible attraction began.

Sienna's relationship with Hawke has ever been difficult, both stubborn personalities clashing on a steady basis, but now that she's reached an age where a kinship with him is plausible, she finds her dreams of existence with him as insufferable as ever. While her feelings for him are no secret, he refuses to see the woman she has become, seeking instead to maintain distance between them even though it hurts them both to do so.

While Hawke struggles with his determination to romantically pursue Sienna, an opposition of the changelings is getting nearer and closer, threatening to duplicate a bloody history Hawke has no want to live through again. To his dismay however, his greatest weapon against them might only be the charwoman who is becoming critical to his existence.

MY THOUGHTS
Kiss of Snow is a report that both sates and feeds our thirst for two characters who hold pieces of our hearts already despite being only secondary characters up until this tale. Every interaction between them mollifies a trust to see them together so right it has become a ravaging need reached its breaking point after nine long books, but those same moments of quiet communication also throw kindling on the blazing fire of attraction we need to see fulfilled with a shocking intensity. Hawke and Sienna's story has been one of haunting incompleteness and unresolved tension, and while we have watched those round them find serenity and happiness, we've been tortured by the emotional vacuum into which they've swept their feelings-wondering when, if ever, the accuracy of what they have tried desperately to squelch will see the fall of day. Finally though, finally, our voracious appetite is whetted and the electric storm that has been brewing between them is unleashed in all its stunning fury, emotions and bodies stripped naked as two people with infinite physical and psychic power engage in a complex dance of courtship; one comprised of innocence and flirtation but likewise of unrelenting need and searing passion.

Sienna is a new woman whose specialty of flavour for Hawke holds us captivated given her unfathomable history with the Psy council and her strict adherence to the Silence protocol prior to her arrival in the SnowDancer den, her defiant nature creating an instant camaraderie with us as she continually challenges a man few dare to push. While she behaves very often as a teen girl whose love goes unrequited might do in the beginning, she quickly matures, refusing to allow Hawke to give her less substance as a lead of her youthful age. Where their relationship has previously been adversarial, lust and affection masked by wickedly sharp tongues and deliberate antagonistic provocations, Sienna now chooses not to don her emotional armor, approaching Hawke with an admirable openness and denying him the choice to return back on his status as alpha to drive her away. When he tries to retire in a mistaken effort to protect her feelings, she follows unerringly, and when he spouts convenient excuses that reduce their kinship to less that what it could be, she beautifully argues her counterpoints and forces him to take to the lies he's told himself so convincingly.

Hawke, for all the vastness of his alpha personality, treats Sienna with exquisite care, almost reverent in his esteem of her innocence as a new woman denied the talent of emotion and physical contact under Silence. He gently introduces her to the joys found in simple contact with a clumsiness that is both deliciously frustrating and sinfully tortuous-each heated moment leaving our skin pulled tight over bodies suddenly too big, muscles held rigid in anticipation as we burn our lips in decadent agony with each newly discovered sensation. His use of the endearment "baby" is one that incites a powerful reaction in us, the book at times rumbling from his mouth infused with such a blatant dominance and possessiveness our own eyes skitter away from the pages as though that ice blue gaze can see us clearly, holding us in the slavery of his office as if we belonged in the Pack hierarchy ourselves. At early times those same four letters are spoken with a warmth and tenderness of which we wouldn't have thought such an imposing man capable, and we indulge in the drugging heat of it as Sienna does, sighing in contentment as an alpha wolf both claims what is his but also allows himself to be claimed in return.

Kiss of Snow is a present to fans of the Psy-Changeling series, the growth of Hawke and Sienna's relationship written in magnificent detail and their progress from adversaries to lovers so euphorically satisfying we can't think how we've made it this long without their history in all its glorious completeness. Ms. Singh has written the ultimate romantic pairing-characters both immeasurably powerful yet extraordinarily vulnerable who challenge, test, and finally have the other, coming together with such combustible force they will always be burned into our hearts and memories. We understand each page with with a smile that just cannot be contained as a dominant wolf teaches a Psy stripped of any colour of a childhood how to play, and a woman teaches a man to cover both the fears and joys that follow a truthful and unbreakable bond.

Rating: 5/5