Tag Archives: vampire romance

Book Review: Club Blood, by Sarah James & Cassandra Celia

I accepted an ARC review copy of Club Blood (by Sarah James and Cassandra Celia) through Pride Book Tours.

Sin City just got extra bloodthirsty… Welcome to Club Blood.

Vampires no longer hide in the shadows and humans have adjusted, learning to coexist with the Known. But in a city filled with sinful acts and lustful affairs, it’s not uncommon for mistakes to happen.

Cecelia agrees to visit Ambrosia, a notorious nightclub run by vampires, on the night of her birthday. But as Cece stumbles across the murder of one of the Known’s most feared council leaders, she is thrown into terrible danger.

For Mercy, being at the top and conquering her kingdom has always been above all else. It doesn’t bother her when she has to rip the heart out of her boss in order to get what she wants, though she does find it inconvenient that there’s a human witness.

Mercy and her coven hold Cece captive in order to secure Mercy’s quest to reign. Soon, Cece finds it hard to separate fear and attraction, being drawn to the enticing danger of Mercy’s life, and Mercy discovers that there might be just one person she’s willing to protect more than herself.

Just being together is enough to upend both of their lives, hurling them towards a war neither of them ever wanted to start.

Mercy must decide whether having Cece could be worth losing her kingdom, and Cece must endeavor to survive in a world of danger and darkness that was designed to kill her.

Their lust might be worth the bloodshed.

I’ve got to admit. I didn’t resonate with this book. The writing is quite readable, and even though I had an ARC, the editing felt competent. So, any complaints I have are really just of the how well the book did or didn’t gel with me sort. And I’m afraid I leaned more toward didn’t.

I liked the idea of the book. A female vampire, fighting the patriarchal vampire culture to rise to the top of her bloody and cut throat career/society. And I appreciate that James and Celia were playing with gender tropes a little bit. But I also felt the plot and characters was super cliched. I’m afraid making it an F/F romance, but keeping all of the characteristics of a M/F romance isn’t transgressive. It’s lazy.

[Spoiler] Here we had the villainous jealous ex. The jealous ex that is contrasted against the innocent love interest by her aggressively sexual presentation (in her clothing, attitudes, and actions). How many times have readers seen this same thing? Too many. There’s both the sassy (and promiscuous) BFF who tempts the pure main character to leave her safe bounds. Her promiscuity gets her killed, BTW. We’ve seen this a million times too. Then she’s replaced with the sassy gay BFF. This one is male, but still a character we’ve all seen in just this character position many times before. Let’s just stop there. But I could go on. The big shark who smiles to Mercy’s face but really duplicitously seeks to re-subjugate the woman who dared leave her subservient place? Yep, not new or interesting.

Really the cliched characters were more than I could handle. But the real reason this didn’t resonate was that it was inconsistent. Mercy is said to be so merciless, but if that was true she never would have let the events of the book go as far as they did without solving (or even acknowledging) the problem. Her very actions undermined the primary characteristic we’re given for her. Further, the whole reason she breaks character (separately than the preceding point) to keep and eventually fall for Cece is a mystery. I mean it’s a mystery in the book. So, again, her supposed ruthlessness is undermined by her actions. Then there is Cece. She has a convenient personality shift that allowed for the happy ending. But it didn’t feel believable. It was too abrupt.

All in all. I had complaints. Several of them. But they are things that bother me. They don’t bother a lot of other people. I suggest reading the book and deciding for yourself.

Other Reviews:

Book Review: Between Bloode and Stone, by Marie Harte

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I picked up a freebie copy of Marie Harte‘s Between Bloode and Stone in December of last year. It randomly bubbled up to the top of my TBR recently and I gave it a read.

There is nothing so dangerous as a predator who loves…

Cursed long ago to check their growing power, vampires can only coexist in small groups. Yet despite their many conflicts, those Of the Bloode possess similar traits. All vampires, no matter where they came from, are male. They can go unnoticed by humans unless they wish otherwise, and they can’t survive sunlight.

Mormo, servant of the goddess Hecate, has created a small, new bloode clan at her behest. The six vampires he commands are rough, ill-disciplined, and mean, and they fail to follow orders on a daily basis. But they’re needed. Something big and bad is coming. Hecate, goddess of death, magic, and gateways, has a duty to guard the borders of the mortal world. She knows that without a strong force to contain the threat, chaos will come, destroying everything in its wake.

Hecate’s secret weapons are those Of the Bloode—vampires. Though they refuse to worship anything but themselves, she loves their wild ways. In order to battle gods and monsters and survive, they’ll need ferocity, inner strength, and something to fight for. Because there is nothing so dangerous as a predator who loves, and those Of the Bloode protect what’s theirs at all costs, in undeath and beyond.

And Varujan of the Night Bloode has just found the one female he can’t do without…

This is one of those books that just isn’t quite bad enough to totally pan, but also isn’t anywhere near good enough to praise. The writing is readable, but not particularly impressive. The plot is thin, but manages to stay stitched together. The characters are colorful, but not particularly well fleshed out. The romance ends in a HEA, but you don’t particularly feel it develop.The world exists, but only in so much as is actually necessary for each scene (no sense of a bigger world), etc. It’s not bad. It’s just not good either.

I liked Fara and her determination to save her self and her brother. I liked the brother a lot, actually, and the other side characters were a hoot. However, Varujan was just a jerk for far too long for me to come around and like him by the end. I also thought the villain was cartoonish and defeated far too easily in a rush at the end.

All in all, I might read the next book if I found it free. But I probably wouldn’t buy it.

Other Reviews:

La Crimson Femme: Book Review ; Between Bloode and Stone

Between Bloode and Stone by Marie Harte-a review

Book Review: Rest in Pieces, by Lucinda Dark

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I received a signed copy of Lucinda Dark‘s Rest in Pieces in the December Supernatural Book Crate.

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. If vampires kill your entire family, vengeance is a must.

I can’t say my parents never warned me about vampires. I just never believed them. Not—that is—until six months ago when vampires broke into my home and killed my family. Thanks to all the skills my parents taught me, I managed to escape but I couldn’t save them.

Two vampires down and the rest of the world to go.

My bid for revenge is going to have to wait, though, because until I turn 18, I’m being placed in the loving care of Elizabeth and Jonathan McKnight—godparents I didn’t even know existed. The clock is ticking until I can get back to my goal of eradicating the vampire race. But something is amiss at my new high school. According to my parents, vampires can’t walk in daylight. So, why then, does Torin Priest? If he’s not a vampire, then what is he? Because unlike the obnoxious asshole, Maverick McKnight, who sees me as some sort of bloodsucking leech on his wealthy family, Torin Priest is most certainly not human.

To stake or not to stake, that is the question.

This book starts with a Joss Whedon quote and then continued it’s Buffy cos-play from there. I say that with a little bit of snark, but no real venom. I didn’t dislike the book. But I do think the Buffy comparisons are unavoidable (and probably purposeful). Unfortunately, Barbie is no Buffy.

I didn’t come around to enjoying this book until well past the half-way mark. But by the end I was ready to continue on to book two. I found Barbie needlessly prickly for the first half of the book, and most of the other characters over-wrought representations of their character archetype. In fact, that last point carried through. The bitchy rich girls stayed stereo-typically bitchy. The sex kittens stayed stereotypical sex kittens. The dude-bro jocks stayed assholes. The kind and loving parents stayed kind and loving. There wasn’t really much depth to any of them and cliches and stereotypes were the words of the day, apparently.

Past halfway, the book finally drags at least one wheel out of the familiar Whedon-esque “I’m a sarcastic badass with a bruised heart” to allow the plot to progress. And at this point I enjoyed my time with the book.

I do have to say that it feels like it’s all going to take a very Anita Blake turn, though. This book has some sexual tension, but only one real (fairly mild) sex scene. But if I had to guess the series’ direction, I’d guess it will be soft porn before too long—given the ending. Which is fine. Some people might take issue with the heroine being 17 and the book containing on page sex. But my only true issue with it was that the idea of 17-18 year old boys who look at sex with a goal of pleasing their partner and know how to do it was almost more fantasy than the vampires. Just sayin’. Well, I suppose it also really muddles the genre classification. I don’t know if this is meant to be YA, NA, adult UF/PNF. I don’t sense that the author knows either. It felt more like she’d just forgotten the age of her characters at some point. Honestly, this genre confusion starts even at the cover.

All in all, I don’t think I’d buy book two. But I’d read it if I could get it at the library or as a freebie, etc.