Review: Dead on the Delta by Stacey Jay

Title: Dead on the Delta (Annabelle Lee #1)
Author: Stacey Jay
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Heat Index: 1 out of 5 (Has some illicit kissing)
Release Date: May 31st, 2011
Word/Page Count: 389 pages
Format: Purchases

Once upon a time, fairies were the stuff of bedtime stories and sweet dreams. Then came the mutations, and the dreams became nightmares. Mosquito-size fairies now indulge their taste for human blood—and for most humans, a fairy bite means insanity or death. Luckily, Annabelle Lee isn’t most humans. The hard-drinking, smart-mouthed, bicycle-riding redhead is immune to fairy venom, and able to do the dirty work most humans can’t. Including helping law enforcement— and Cane Cooper, the bayou’s sexiest detective—collect evidence when a body is discovered outside the fairy-proof barricades of her Louisiana town.

But Annabelle isn’t equipped to deal with the murder of a six year-old girl or a former lover-turned-FBI snob taking an interest in the case. Suddenly her already bumpy relationship with Cane turns even rockier, and even the most trust-worthy friends become suspects. Annabelle’s life is imploding: between relationship drama, a heartbreaking murder investigation, Breeze-crazed drug runners, and a few too many rum and Cokes, Annabelle is a woman on the run—from her past, toward her future, and into the arms of a darkness waiting just for her. . . .

Arai's Review:

With a good UF/paranormal world, it’s hard to strike that balance between realistic and disbelief. You want to have the reader sucked in, devouring everything they can about your world because it’s new and different. On the other hand, you don’t want to push them too far into disbelief and pull them out of the story entirely.

Dead on the Delta had that balance struck perfectly in the beginning of the book. Then, about halfway through, there were minor bumps that pulled me out of the story momentarily. My enjoyment of the first part of the book pulled me back in the story, though, and I was able to chalk those moments up to the fact that this is a first book in a series. But then I hit the ending. And that was the nuked fridge to blow this story out of the water.

In the beginning, I enjoyed Annabelle. She was a heavily flawed character with a past that weighed heavily on her present. Although she spends most of her days drinking on the job, you grow as attached to her as she does to the surly cat she accidentally adopts. At the same time, you hope for better things for her. Annabelle does have some emotion growth by the end of the novel, continuing to bring promise to her character.

There is a love triangle in the book. Normally, this isn’t on my list of pet peeves but the way this one was handled really just rubbed me wrong. Years and years ago, Annabelle and Hitch were a thing until Annabelle was raped by Hitch’s brother.

This was the first mini nuked fridge bump.

For those confused about this phrase, I refer you to an entry from Urban Dictionary:

Nuke the fridge is a colloquialism used to refer to the moment in a film series that is so incredible that it lessens the excitement of subsequent scenes that rely on more understated action or suspense.

The story doesn’t go into much detail, letting the reader get the gist from a few snippets scattered here and there but, basically, Annabelle was a little tipsy (which, since it’s her habit, see above, there’s hint that drugs/roofies may have been involved) and doesn’t remember how she got into bed with the brother. She does remember waking up with blood between her legs and a smirk on the brother’s face. Hitch believes Annabelle was happy and willing to jump into the brother’s bed because she doesn’t try to say anything different. They break up and she drops out of medical school.

I should mention that Annabelle was already a flawed character at this point, having grown up in a rich family with parents who doted on her sister and gave up on Annabelle. It didn’t improve when her sister was killed and her parents put that responsibility on Annabelle’s shoulders. The point is, this seemed like a bit of unnecessary drama to break up a couple. Kind of like using a grenade when a bullet would do.

Of course, Hitch comes back to town with his FBI girlfriend when Annabelle and her cop boyfriend discover the body of a murdered little girl. The body is in a territory that has been taken over by fairies who will pretty much eat you alive when given the chance or, if the person is lucky, just get enough of a nibble on you to put venom in your veins where you’ll slowly go insane and then die. Annabelle is one of the few people with an immunity that keeps the fairies away, mostly.

I say mostly because she gets mobbed by fairies at night trying to protect an idiot Hitch and ends up with several bites. You can see the signs that she’s starting to suffer from some of the effects; majorly dilated pupils, feeling dizzy and light-headed, and starting to move things with her mind. Strangely enough, this wasn’t the nuked fridge moment for me. There was enough build up and backstory to make it work.

I did take a minor exception to the strange man who is invisible (yes, he has the ability to be invisible) and injects Annabelle with a serum to “make it better,” then tells her not to tell anybody. And she’s good with that.

The murder and drug plotline goes along smoothly until the end when it brings about the big nuked fridge. We find out that the murderer is the girl’s mother who happens to be sleeping with her brother, the girl’s dad.

I’ll leave you to your thoughts on that.

We also have the second minor nuked fridge when we find out that the FBI agent is really Hitch’s fiancé and that she’s pregnant. But, we don’t know she’s pregnant until after she’s been grievously wounded by a bullet and Annabelle is in the position to save her life.

Oh, drama. Sometimes you’re a bit heavy-handed.

I’ll still read the next book but I’m definitely going to be approaching it with less enthusiasm than I would have before I read the last 50 pages of the first book.