Review: Full Moon Rising by Keri Arthur
Riley Jenson is half-werewolf, half-vampire, works for a paranormal investigations agency in Melbourne, and is currently in heat. (The werewolves in this universe have a moon-cycle thing, just go with it.) Her twin brother goes missing, a strange vampire turns up at her door, and the next 350 pages are roughly forty percent investigation and sixty percent Riley sleeping with attractive non-humans. Full Moon Rising is the first in Keri Arthur’s Riley Jenson Guardian series.
I had to recalibrate when I started this. If you’re expecting urban fantasy where the romance is a side dish, this is not that book. The sex scenes are frequent, fairly explicit for a 2006 mass-market, and the heat-cycle premise is used to justify Riley sleeping with multiple partners across the book without it being framed as moral failure, which I genuinely appreciate. Arthur is doing something a little ahead of its time there.
The mystery plot is okay. There are cloning shenanigans and shady labs and the requisite Big Pharma villain energy. Riley’s twin Rhoan is the standout side character, and his relationship with Riley is one of the better sibling bonds I’ve read in UF. Quinn, the vampire love interest, is more of a question mark; he reads like Arthur was still figuring out who he is, and the alpha-male possessiveness gets thick enough in places that I rolled my eyes.
The prose is functional rather than beautiful, and there are info-dumps about pack politics that you’ll have to power through. Once Arthur gets her footing, around the midpoint, the book moves.
For who? Fans of Anita Blake’s earlier hornier era, Kim Harrison readers who want more heat, anyone tired of UF heroines who pretend they don’t notice attractive men. Skip if explicit content isn’t your thing or if you bristle at fated-mate vibes.
Hot, messy, dated in places, oddly progressive in others. I’ll keep going.