Dragon Heat by Allyson James

First off the cover of this one is alright, some good man candy, but the guy just looks like he got back from the set of Jesus Christ, Superstar. That’s one glassy eyed stare going on there. But on to the book.

Lisa Singleton has had a rough time of it for awhile. She files for divorce from her cheating jerk of an ex-husband into the arms of her grandmother. She gets on her feet after that, and then her grandmother dies. After the funeral Lisa finds out her grandmother left her the lease to her apartment and she moves in.

What Lisa doesn’t count on is her new roommate, a fifty-foot dragon. Lisa doesn’t know that the dragon, named Caleb, is a warrior dragon who’s there to protect her from a black dragon bent on retuning to his home plane and an evil witch with a horrific lust for power. Caleb manages to turn into human form and defends Lisa, with sexy results. Caleb and Lisa then trek over the streets of San Francisco searching for the black dragon to defeat him and working with others to bring down the evil witch.

There was some serious steam going on in this book, despite the fact that Caleb is described as having hair down to his ass (which is a complete turn off for me). Lisa and Caleb work well together, both in and out of bed. The black dragon’s got a witchy sidekick and they are rather steamy. And the evil witch has some succubus friends that just play out some of my gorgeous (if weird with them having long hair too) fantasies with two men.

The fantasy world with the parallel plain to the dragon homeland, called Dragonspace, was a bit eye rolling for me. As were the over the top displays of warrior-Alpha male dominance at times displayed by Caleb. There weren’t any TSTL moments by any of the characters, but the action and some of the situations caused some more eye rolling.

One thing I did like about the book was the multi-cultural aspect of the characters. Lisa is Chinese and Scottish, there’s a witch named Saba who is half Japanese and there’s some great scenes in Chinatown in San Francisco, but they’re off the beaten path rather than in some sort of tourist ideal.

Though some of the things were over the top in the story or just kinda repetitive, it did say a lot about accepting who you are and where you come from and not lusting after things that are better left alone. The next book in the series is about the witch, Saba, and the black dragon, named Malcolm, and I’m sure I’ll be reading that one as well, since Malcolm and Saba did add to this story in some good ways.

Grade: C+