Review: Biting Bad by Chloe Neill

Item: Biting Bad (Chicagoland Vampires, #8)
Author: Kate

Posted March 4, 2022 by Kate

Check out on Goodreads | Buy on Amazon
Genres: Adult, Romance, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Also by this author: Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires, #1), Friday Night Bites (Chicagoland Vampires, #2), Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires, #3)
Series: The Chicagoland Vampires #8
Publisher: Berkley Books
Source: My shelves

Merit has been a vampire for only a short while, but she's already seen a lifetime's worth of trouble. She and her Master, centuries-old Ethan Sullivan, have risked their lives time and again to save the city they love. But not all of Chicago is loving them back.
Anti-vampire riots are erupting all over town, striking vampires where it hurts the most. A splinter group armed with Molotov cocktails and deep-seated hate is intent on clearing the fanged from the Windy City come hell or high water.
Merit and her allies rush to figure out who's behind the attacks, who will be targeted next, and whether there's any way to stop the wanton destruction. The battle for Chicago is just beginning, and Merit is running out of time.

< This review does contain spoilers >

Hello! Welcome to book seven of the Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill :) If you’re new to the series, I recommend you start with my review of book one here, because this will contain spoilers up through this book.

As a general recap, the Chicagoland vampires series follows Merit, a newly turned vampire, who stands Sentinel (as a kind of warrior/brand rep/on-site PI) for Cadogan House, one of the three Chicago Vampire Houses. All vampire Houses are ruled by the Greenwich Presidium (GP), based in the UK… at least they were. Now, they’ve bucked the GP but are dealing with the fallout of humans finding out what’s behind the supernatural curtain, as it were.

What I liked:

✨ Still in love with the vibe of these books! They don’t take themselves too seriously, and really make me want to bunk up with the rest of the Cadogan vampires <3

✨ Worldbuilding continues to be on point! Neill did a great job of continuing to layer the worldbuilding as she balances and embraces the supernatural and mundane.

”Sometimes you make me swoon.”
“If it’s only sometimes, I’m not doing my job adequately.”

✨ The mystery of the riots – I thoroughly enjoyed this as a plot-point… because it seems pretty accurate to what a “vampire-coming-out” would look like.

✨ Houses coming together <3 Absolutely DIGGING the Cadogan + Gray House situation!! I wish the Houses came together more. Navarre is still on my shit list (can they just get themselves together? Goodness.) But Gray is proving to be a fun, possible ally! Plus Jonah :)

Points of Discussion:

✨ Merit and Ethan have hit their stride?? I hope this true! I’m pretty over the tug-of-war game between these two. It’s time for them to be together. They’ve moved in together, and although they haven’t been an item for long, I loved watching them work through regular couples problems (with a supernatural addition) as they try to do something as simple as a Valentine’s Day dinner. It was nice to see them interact on an emotional level without all the drama that’s infected their connection in previous books.

✨ McKetrick – has this subplot being going on forever?? It feels like it.

””I’m rarely good, Merit. But I’m often spectacular.”

✨ Overall, not too much arc development. We still have several loose threads waving in the wind, but this was a nice “check-in” with the characters.

✨ Mallory – it’s nice to see her back in the fold! I’m still cautious about her… so we’ll see… Neill made some concessions for her in this book, so I’m hoping she becomes a strong character in her own right (I love watching her with Catcher!!) or gets out of the way. I don’t want her middling in and out like she was previously.

Conclusion:

This is the point where I hit a bit of a burn-out. I read eight of these books in a row… which is completely unheard of for me. The books feel more like episodes of an addicting tv show rather than independent PNR stories, which is a good thing! They’re fun books! But I realized upon closing this one that I need a break.

This book seemed more laidback (although it dealt with more violence, not sure how Neill managed that), and I unfortunately need this series to step up it’s game and do something fresh. Still enjoyable, but it’s starting to drag a bit with the too-similar plotlines.