Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan is truly one of my guiltiest of reading pleasures. The level of love I have for this series is very similar to the love I hold for this one, albeit for entirely different reasons. The other I love because of the immaculate plotting, character development, and writing. This series I love because it is a pulpy, trashy delight.
Immortal Beloved features a protagonist who is both clueless and snarky, sure of her worthlessness and yet totally indignant when treated as such, and manages despite these conflicting traits to win the reader over. It’s what this librarian calls a character writing miracle! The author ekes out information in drips and drabs with a “you knew this was coming” wink and manages to give you juuuuust enough to keep going along with this thing.
The idea behind the series is that walking among us regular humans are those whom are born immortal. They look like us, talk like us, but they do not age like us. They also have some magic. Or actually “magick” because regular magic would be basic. Signifying, to my mind, and hopefully to yours that this book will be earthy, campy, and potentially a little sexy.
Enter Nastasya, our main immortal. Her good friends call her Nasty and probably not just because it is a convenient short form nickname. From her character description we gather that she is actually pretty dirty, unkempt, underfed, and drugged.
Nastasya has a crisis of conscience early on and it is that crisis that sets the story in motion. We know she is over 400 years old. We know that she is repressing terrible memories. We know she needs to get away from her disreputable friends and start over. We know when she meets the hot immortal hunk who takes an immediate dislike to her that there will be an abundance of sexual tension for the rest of the book.
The joy of this book is not that you don’t know where it is going, although there are a few surprises along the way. The joy of this book is that it is incredibly easy and tremendously fun to read. When I begin reading this book, I immediately regret not putting the sequels on hold. It is a romp from beginning to end and I hope you’ll enjoy it – and its sequels – as much as I do.
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