Review: Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton

Flirt
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Publication: Berkley Hardcover; 1 edition (February 2, 2010)

Product description from Amazon: When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss. But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn't the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington's grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington. Not really. And not for long.

My Thoughts: The story itself is a pretty simple one. Anita has two clients in a week who want her to raise their spouses from the dead for reasons they do not want to disclose. Anita refuses but one of the clients won't take no for an answer and resorts to kidnapping and threats to murder Anita's lovers to get Anita to change her mind. How Anita manages to save herself and her lovers makes up the rest of the story.

The main focus here is on Anita's relationship with the animals she holds, loves, and controls. The vampire parts of Anita's life are only mentioned in passing in this story. There is less of the gratuitious sex in this one than in some of the other books in this series but still I wouldn't suggest it for younger teens.

Almost more interesting than the story itself is the essay at the end of the story where Ms. Hamilton explains the process of writing this book from the incident that sparked the first idea to the final product. The book also includes cartoons by Jennie Breeden who does The Devil's Panties web comic strip as she gives her take on the inital story idea too.

One thing about the book does baffle me though. The cover has an image of a razor blade and I have no idea why that image was chosen. To the best of my knowledge, there was no mention of a razor blade in the book. And, if it is symbolic for something, I have no idea what.

Challenges: RYOB Challenge