This guest review is from Aidee. Aidee recently graduated from law school, where romance novels provided a much needed break from reading court opinions. She started reading romance in high school, but isn’t quite sure which was her first romance read—Jean M. Auel, Fern Michaels, or something that she has completely forgotten by now. She loves reading, writing, chocolate, tea, and listening to music, although not necessarily in that order. The books she keeps thinking of have been Nalini Singh’s Last Guard, Elsa Sjunneson’s Being Seen, Patricia Briggs’s Wild Sign, and Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series. Because her mind is a little chaotic, there are more, but that’s probably a good stopping point.

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Ruby Fever is spectacular and bittersweet and is a wonderful cap to the series. This book will not work if you are not familiar with the previous books in the series, particularly Emerald Blaze ( A | BN | K | AB ) and Sapphire Flames ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) , but you don’t need to reread these books before devouring this one, as Ilona Andrews does a good job of reminding readers what is going on without making these reminders feel redundant.

I think this book is one of the best examples of character development during a series; Catalina has gone from a nervous new Prime to someone comfortable exercising her power to defend her family and carry out her duties, and it is epic. We also have all of our questions answered, and if I explained the answers, there would be too many spoiler tags in this review. However, it is safe to say that the theme of the importance of family continues in this book for all the characters we’ve come to love throughout the series.

Catalina is trying to stop a terrifying assassin and his organization that is after her family and lover, because if she doesn’t, there will be no peace for any of them. She is also figuring out two seemingly unconnected mysteries, the murder of a member of the magical elite, and an attack on her mentor, boss, and family friend, Linus. It is all pulled together as the book progresses, and neatly resolved by the end.

Perhaps the best example of what the book is like is the prologue, which is by turns funny, violent, and sweet. Arabella and Leon make jokes about their new house being haunted, there is some attempted murder and self-defense killing, and a marriage proposal. It’s a glorious way to start off the book and lays out what the rest of the story will feel like.

This book is not like the previous books, where Nevada and then Catalina were solving cases and also doing magical things. The case—who attacked Linus and why—is solved long before the book reaches its climax or ends. The tension is in stopping the bad guys from getting to the family.

Catalina has to deal with a multi-pronged threat, not only to her family/House, but to Texas and potentially, magic wielding society. The threat involves the assassin who murdered Alessandro’s father, as well as the dangerous serum that can give people magical powers as easily as kill them. This means Catalina is threatened on a personal and professional front, as she is the Deputy Warden of Texas, and for most of the book, she is the Acting Warden, due to the terrible attack on Linus. This is, naturally, scary for her and while she admits to her fear, she doesn’t let it slow her down.

Catalina thinks she is on her own, but it didn’t feel that way to me while reading the story. She has the full support of all her family, from grandparents to her youngest (and funniest) cousin, Leon. Nevada and Rogan make a few appearances throughout the book, but they’re busy dealing with their own piece of the threat and so don’t take center stage. This is actually okay because this is Catalina’s book, not Nevada’s book.

The reason this book is bittersweet for me is because there have been rumblings on the author’s blog that they won’t be coming back to the Hidden Legacy world for a while, if ever. This makes me sad because I really enjoy all the characters—Nevada, Catalina, Arabella, and everyone else. I’d love to read short stories or novellas about Penelope (Nevada, Catalina, and Arabella’s mom), and one with Augustine would be fascinating. And of course, I want to know what Arabella’s adventures would be like.

One of the things about this series I’ve enjoyed the most is seeing the younger characters grow up as the books progressed. Everyone we met in Burn for Me is an adult—which is somewhat surprising because it only took about 6 and a half books to cover so much time in this world. It is a good ending point, if we never get another book in this world: all the big plot questions are answered—family secrets from Alessandro and Catalina’s families are laid out, and the loose ends from Nevada’s books are finally tied off.

I was lucky enough to get an ARC for this review, but I also pre-ordered the audiobook. I have since reread this story multiple times, including when I listened to the audiobook. Emily Rankin does a good job performing this book, giving all the major characters their own voice—down to whispering when people mouth things in the book to each other, which not all audiobook narrators do.

I enjoy this series for a couple of reasons. The magic system is fairly straightforward, but still interesting in how the characters interact with it. This means I don’t need to worry about understanding a lot of complex rules to understand the magic, which is nice. More importantly to me, I really enjoy the interactions between the Baylors and the people they bring into their family, like Cornelius and Runa—and of course, Rogan and Alessandro.

The Baylors are not a perfect family, but in spite of that, they work together and care deeply for each other’s well being and happiness. That isn’t always present in urban fantasy novels, or if it is, it is very much overshadowed by other elements of the story (similar to how friendships with others are sometimes nonexistent in romance novels). The books also have a lot of catnip for me, like competent heroines, fun banter between characters, and underlying, sweeping romances. I think this series is close to a comfort read for me because of that.

If you’ve enjoyed the Hidden Legacy series so far and want the answers to all the questions, as well as to see Catalina get her happy ending and also see

…this is the book for you. There are several posts on Ilona Andrews’ site that answer questions you may have after finishing the book. And the authors are donating a quarter of the proceeds of this book to the UN Refugee Fund because of the war in Ukraine.