I picked up a used copy of Mandy M. Roth‘s Daughter of Darkness at the second hand shop. (I was totally curious about what book would have such an obvious Angelina Jolie look-alike on the cover.)

Description from Goodreads:
Good or Evil? How’s a girl to choose?

Gwyneth Stevens, born of magical descent and raised by humans, fully understands that creatures of the night exist outside of books and movies. When her job leads her to Necro’s Magik World & Supernatural Theme Park, she meets Pallo, an Italian vampire so captivating, so perfect and so familiar. Before she can fully explore her feelings for him, fate steps in, bringing with it a sexy bounty hunter who makes Gwen’s insides tighten and her body burn. Caleb instantly lays claim to her heart.

Torn between her love for two men, Gwen finds herself caught in a triangle shrouded in passion, lust and immortality. In a world where humans live in ignorance and supernaturals are a sub-culture, anything is possible.

Review:

I give this a good, solid, erotic 3-star rating, keeping in mind that, while not a wholly different rating system, I do generally have far lower plot/character development expectations for an erotic novel.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. The men were kind and sexy, while Gwen had a wonderful sarcastic streak. Unfortunately she also slowly crept into the ‘too stupid to live’ category. She constantly ran out on her own, despite knowing she was being hunted. She seemed to be unable to look beyond even the simplest deception, to see the obvious truth of a situation and she was then painfully stubborn about it.

To be fair, she wasn’t the only one showing evidence of stupidity though. I mean, come on, if you were trying to hide a woman from someone you know to be dangerous and who will obviously want her, would you then take her dancing in HIS club? Seriously, would you? Stupid! Honestly, some of these bonehead moves felt very much like needed plot devices. They irritated me as much for being too stupid to credit as for their obvious mechanical necessity to the plot.

When I picked this book up I was unsure how it would go over. I generally hate love triangles, but I really enjoy ménage fiction. From the blurb, I could have seen this going either way. It’s a bit of both…or rather, there is one mild ménage scene and a love pentagon (Gwen and four male pursuers). Since it wasn’t an angsty read I could handle the triangle/pentagon aspect of it, but there were just too many men after Gwen. This is especially true since it wasn’t really THIS Gwen they all fell in love with. (That will make sense if you read the book.) There was absolutely no way for this to have a satisfactory conclusion. Someone important was going to get hurt or left out and I’m not thrilled at how it ended. Since this is the first in a series maybe there will be a better ending in a future book.