Guest Post: My Top 5 Urban Fantasy Novels With Nicola R. White

Guest Post: My Top 5 Urban Fantasy Novels With Nicola R. White

Since releasing my debut urban fantasy romance, Fury’s Kiss, this month, I have been thinking about which books inspired me to write urban fantasy and taught me just how awesome this genre can be. After much thought, I’ve narrowed down my top 5 and am excited to share them with you!

1. Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison

All the creatures of the night gather in “the Hollows” of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party … and to feed.

Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining — and it’s Rachel Morgan’sjob to keep that world civilized. A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she’ll bring ’em back alive, dead … or undead.

This book really captures the way suspense and humour come together in urban fantasy to produce total awesome sauce. I love Harrison’s hilarious, well-developed secondary character, Jenks, pixie and sidekick to the heroine, Rachel Morgan.

2. The entire Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill

They killed me. They healed me. They changed me.

Sure, the life of a graduate student wasn’t exactly glamorous, but I was doing fine until Chicago’s vampires announced their existence to the world. When a rogue vampire attacked me, I was lucky he only got a sip. Another bloodsucker scared him off and decided the best way to save my life was to make me the walking undead.

Now I’ve traded sweating over my thesis for learning to fit in at a Hyde Park mansion full of vamps loyal to Ethan “Lord o’ the Manor” Sullivan. Of course, as a tall, green-eyed, four-hundred-year-old vampire, he has centuries’ worth of charm, but unfortunately he expects my gratitude—and servitude. Right… (from jacket copy of Some Girls Bite, Chicagoland Vampires book #1).

It may be cheating to list an entire series, but I don’t care! I eat up Neill’s series and beg for more with every new release. This series has it all—awesome world building, adventure, romance, and total wish fulfillment. I wish I could kick butt like Merit!

3. Would-Be Witch by Kimberly Frost

The family magic seems to have skipped over Tammy Jo Trask. All she gets are a few untimely visits from long-dead, smart-mouthed family ghost Edie. But when her locket-an heirloom that happens to hold Edie’s soul-is stolen in the midst of a town-wide crime spree, it’s time for Tammy to find her inner witch.

After a few experiences with her dysfunctional magic, Tammy turns to the only person in small-town Duval, Texas, who can help: the very rich and highly magical Bryn Lyons. He might have all the answers-and a 007 savoir faire to boot-but the locket isn’t the only heirloom passed down in Tammy’s family. She also inherited a warning: stay away from Lyons.

Frost’s Southern Witch series is a fairly recent discovery for me, and I’m so sad I didn’t find it sooner. A love triangle is introduced early on (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler!) and while I usually don’t like this trope, Frost makes it work.

4. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability.” She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome–and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life….

But Bill has a disability of his own: He’s a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of–big surprise–murder. And when one of Sookie’s coworkers is killed, she fears she’s next….

Originally marketed as the Southern Vampire Mysteries, this series is credited by some with introducing urban fantasy to the mainstream. It has since become known as the True Blood series, after its spin-off TV series, and the Sookie Stackhouse series. I discovered this series after devouring Harris’s contemporary mysteries, which are even better than her urban fantasies.

5. Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

October Daye [is] a fae half-breed, former street kid, and self-exiled knight-errant from the Duchy of Shadowed Hills. Her friends—the few friends she has left—call her Toby. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, she’s retreated entirely from the fae community, spending her nights stocking shelves at a San Francisco grocery store and her days asleep in her apartment downtown. It takes two to really make an exile work, and when Countess Evening Winterrose is murdered, Toby finds herself yanked abruptly back into the world she thought she was leaving behind. It’s going to take everything she’s got just to stay alive, and the stakes are higher than anyone has guessed…

Unlike the majority of urban fantasies, this book doesn’t start out with an origin story, but with a character who is well aware of how much her special snowflake status is going to interfere with her life. This book draws you in from the first page and leaves you wanting more when it’s over.

 

Title: Fury’s Kiss (New England Furies Book 1)

Author: Nicola R. White

Release Date: August 1, 2015

Publisher: Strange Roads Press

Blurb: Tara Walker dreams of more excitement than slinging plates of seafood for Cape Cod tourists, but as she learns when she is attacked and forced to fight for her life, fate sometimes has a funny way of giving you exactly what you wish for. Faced with strange new powers and embroiled in a murder investigation, Tara must now race to uncover the secrets of the ancient Fury that has woken inside of her – and of the evil that stalks her.
As if Tara’s life hasn’t gotten complicated enough, she is forced to ally herself with Jackson Byrne, witness to her assault and uncle to a pint-sized oracle whose fate is intertwined with hers. Skeptical, stubborn, and oh-so-sexy, Jackson wrestles with demons of his own. He is determined to ignore the attraction rising between them even faster than the body count, but like it or not, he and Tara need each other if they are to unravel the mysteries that surround them.

 

About the Author

Nicola R. White is no stranger to the fantastic. Although there are no Furies in her family tree (that she knows of), she comes from a small city on the east coast of Canada where ghost stories and superstitions abound. She has worked on movie sets, as a bartender, in a lighthouse, and as a lawyer, and though she’s never been an exotic dancer like her character, Alex Hughes, she does know how to pole dance.

She has always been fascinated by the strange and morbid, and often stays up too late reading books that give her nightmares. She believes truth is stranger than fiction, and just a few of her heroes are Buffy, Dana Scully, and Xena.

Nicola is a member of Romance Writers of America and Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada, and is an active member and supporter of the award-winning Romance Divas website and online forum.

Author website: www.nicolarwhite.com

Twitter: @Nicola_R_White

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nicola-R-White/1445579489055323?ref=hl

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