In the 1800s, Felix Leblanc makes a deal with a greed demon and gets what he covets the most: immortality, wealth, and the interest of the rich and beautiful women of New Orleans.  His hedonistic existence crashes down around him when one of his clients comes to a bad end.  Felix puts his greed behind him, but his deal with the demon can’t be so easily revoked.

Now, in present day New Orleans, Felix is a voodoo practitioner, and a successful one at that.  But what used to bring him joy now just marks time.  That is, until Regan Henry crosses his path.  Regan is newly free of a horrible husband and has bought herself a mansion that holds more history than one would expect.  The mansion is haunted and holds more danger to Regan than she knows.  It’s up to Felix to free Regan from the forces of evil which threaten to overtake her, and to do so he’ll have to risk everything, even his burgeoning relationship with Regan.

New Orleans is the perfect backdrop for this haunting tale of ghosts, voodoo, demons, and more.  Erin McCarthy beautifully sets up the past versus present, greed versus love, and evil versus good in this fascinating tale.  The Taking features two charming protagonists who have to take charge of their lives in order to overcome the obstacles that face them.  I truly liked Felix and Regan and wanted them to be together, to overcome the odds stacked against them.  Their love story was very much central to The Taking, but what intrigued me more was the supernatural world mixed in with modern day New Orleans.  Ms. McCarthy made the world of The Taking come alive for me; parts of the story drew me in so that I felt I was really there with Regan and Felix.  That, more than the romance, made The Taking memorable to me.

The Taking is the third in Ms. McCarthy’s Deadly Sins series, but as I have not yet read My Immortal or Fallen, I can safely say The Taking stands on its own.  Though the protagonists from the first two Deadly Sins books didn’t appear in this story, I will definitely be going back to read them because the world Ms. McCarthy has created in the Deadly Sins series is fresh, original and not to be missed!