Yesterday I grabbed Sloan Archer‘s novel, Mercy’s Debt, off of the Amazon KDP list. Lately I’ve been really agonising over which book to read next, so when I accidentally tapped this one, opening it directly after it downloaded I decided to just roll with the punches and read it right then.
Description from Amazon:
After graduating from the prestigious Dewhurst University, Mercy Montgomery finds herself in a bit of financial trouble: over $108,000 worth of financial trouble, in fact. She can’t find a job to save her life, and with bill collectors constantly at her heels, she has no idea how she will ever come up with the money needed in order to keep her head above water.
Mercy’s monetary worries seem to be over after a chance meeting with mystifyingly pale Michael Graves, who offers her a high-paying job at his company, Dignitary. But there’s a catch; the seemingly harmless Dignitary is an underground organization that offers human chaperones to wealthy bloodsucking clients.
As if congregating with the undead doesn’t make life complicated enough for Mercy, there’s a savage killer on the loose who appears to have a craving for her blood. Soon Mercy is torn between a dark and dangerous underworld of supernatural desire and a simple life of practicality, and sexy but dangerous business magnate Robert Bramson is the man she blames for her confusion. As the killer closes in, Mercy realizes that she must make a decision. But will she make her choice too late?
Review:
Sloan Archer is one talented author. I’ll give her that. Her character’s are fresh, funny, and fleshed out, especially Mercy and her roommate Liz. Their banter is some of the best in the book. She understands humour and can time a joke brilliantly. Though I’ll admit the main sex scene felt a little choppy, it still had some smoulder to it, and I like the cover.
Mercy’s Debt starts out with something a lot of recent college grads can relate to, many student loans and few job prospects. I don’t know if the completely out-of-leftfield lesbian exploration passage was supposed to be something else recent grads could relate to, funny, or a red herring of some sort. I liked it well enough. It’s something you don’t see addressed in the genre often, but it seemed to serve no purpose in the book. In fact the book, in terms of the story, doesn’t even start until Mercy meets Michael and Robert. The background information in the first couple chapters helped solidify Mercy’s character, but seemed awful long for such a short novel.
Which brings me to my only MAJOR complaint, the shortness of the novel. This is something I seem to be harping on about a lot lately. Where is the rest of the book? I’d say it ends on a cliffhanger, but that requires an ending of some sort. Something has to wrap up and conclude. This is one of those books that just stops instead. You still don’t know who the murder is, what happened to Liz, if Mercy will fall in love or accept the love offered her, pays off her debts, or lives happily ever after or not. You know the characters names and some of their histories, that the setting is in California, there are vampires and someone is killing women, that’s is.
I laughed out loud a lot in this book. I liked the main and supporting cast. I routed for the fragile hero and witty heroine. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, right up until I hit the unexpected words ‘The End’ and got a little bit angry. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that there isn’t yet a second book to run out and buy, even if begrudgingly. I have no problem buying sequel to finish a series. It always irks me to buy sequels to finish a book and that’s what this feels like. I got a free teaser, but have to pay for the conclusion. This doesn’t leave me with feelings of happy contentment, even if I enjoyed the book up until that point.