Ilona Andrews – Burn for me

The first book in the Hidden Legacy series, published October 28, 2014.
Genre: paranormal romance
Cover: nice
Re-read for the first time as it is a good book and I want book 2.



#1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews launches a brand-new Hidden Legacy series, in which one woman must place her trust in a seductive, dangerous man who sets off an even more dangerous desire . . .

Nevada Baylor is faced with the most challenging case of her detective career - a suicide mission to bring in a suspect in a volatile situation. Nevada isn't sure she has the chops. Her quarry is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, who can set anyone and anything on fire.
Then she's kidnapped by Connor "Mad" Rogan - a darkly tempting billionaire with equally devastating powers. Torn between wanting to run and wanting to surrender to their overwhelming attraction, Nevada must join forces with Rogan to stay alive.
Rogan's after the same target, so he needs Nevada. But she's getting under his skin, making him care about someone other than himself for a change. And, as Rogan has learned, love can be as perilous as death, especially in the magic world.


A new Ilona Andrews series, of course I had to read it asap. So far I have loved everything they have ever written, and this book was not the exception. I loved this new world, and especially the heroine, Nevada Baylor.


Welcome to a new world where to have magic, is to have power and wealth, and the more magic a family or House has, the more powerful they are. The big Houses all rule a certain part of town, and they usually take care of their employees and possessions.

Nevada is a private investigator in Houston, and a good one. She has taken over the agency her parents have built. Her father has died from cancer, and her mother lost her license four years ago, so now she is running the agency. Her younger siblings are part time employed on paper, and her grandmother runs an armored vehicle repair shop. She has a magical talent for armored vehicles. Nevada’s magic must stay secret though, as she is a human lie detector. The military would snatch her up in a second if it became known, and Nevada does not want to witness the horrors that her new job would bring her.
To pay for her fathers medical bills, she has mortgaged the business and everything it entails to a larger company, House Montgomery. Mostly they leave them alone as long as Nevada pays the monthly bills, but now they pressure her to take a job for them. Bring in Adam Pierce, a dangerous Prime mage, to his loving family, or lose the business, the house and everything else they own. Nevada knows it is a suicide mission, but she has no choice. There would be nothing left to start again, and she has to take care of her family.

With the help of her brother Bern, who is a computer geek, she sets out to find out everything she can about Adam Pierce. She will never be able to get him by force, he would just burn through anything she could try on him, so she has to make him come in voluntarily. And to do that, she needs to talk to him, make herself interesting to this spoiled bored rich guy who likes to burn things, and people.
He is wanted by the Houston PD for killing one of their own when he and an underage accomplice robbed a bank using magic. The fireball they left behind in the vault did a lot of damage and killed the security guard and some visitors to the bank. The video evidence is clear, Adam Pierce likes being notorious and getting attention.

Someone else is after Adam Pierce as well, another Prime Mage, Connor “Mad” Rogan, known for destroying whole cities with his power. The other kid is his nephew, when his cousin came begging for his help, he could not deny her.

When Connor spots Nevada in the biker shop he assumed she was working with Adam as his liaison, so he kidnapped her from the arboretum she met with Adam, determined to make her tell him everything she knows. But Nevada is stronger than she knows, and she resists his magic. She refuses to give in, and break her clients’ confidentiality. When she breaks his spell and almost dies in the process, Mad Rogan takes her home, to her big surprise. He could have just killed her, for a mass murderer that would not be difficult.

The next day he demands she meets him for lunch, to discuss Adam Pierce. Nevada doesn’t trust him, but she knows she needs his help and his resources to have even a little chance of bringing in Pierce alive, before the cops find and shoot him on sight. But Adam is not working alone, he is being protected by a whole team of mages, someone else is behind everything that is happening, but who, and why?

And so Nevada finds herself being a person of interest for two dangerous Prime Mages, and she knows she can trust neither. Adam is a dangerous psychopath, and Mad Rogan is too dangerous and too far out of her league as well. Even though she is attracted to him, she won’t act on it. She has her own life, her business and her family to take care of.


I loved this book. Nevada is such a great and strong heroine. She is capable of a lot of things, even though her magic is not so powerful. She is good at her job, and she makes the tough decisions without whining. Being a human lie detector, she is as honest as possible, and not afraid to speak her mind against more powerful mages.

The world building is great. 200 Years ago the Osiris serum awakened magic abilities in human beings, but there are drawbacks as well, and Ilona Andrews shows those too. Like the creatures living in the Pit, the drowned part of the city. And when the magic loses strength in a family line, that House looses power. Breeding and marrying into the right bloodlines became so very important; a marriage of love is a rare thing, especially in the most powerful Houses. And where there is no love, there is little empathy for people with less magic and power.

The personal background on Nevada, Adam and Connor are told in little bits and pieces, making them come to life on the pages, and give us some understanding why they are who they are. Adam is just a bad apple, feeling entitled to whatever he wants but Connor is certainly an intriguing character.

I would love to read more books in this series, I want to know what happens next, who is behind it all, but most of all, I want Connor to become more human and fall in love with Nevada.

I enjoyed Nevada’s family; they are great characters, especially her grandmother and mother. They do have her back when needed, but have their own opinions as well.

10 stars.

© 2014 Reviews by Aurian