Tag Archives: vampire

It’s “Bound by Blood” week

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challenge

I admittedly have a rather large library. Between my bought books, freebie books, gifted books, review request books and won books (both physical and e-book, but mostly e-book) I have almost 3,500 books on my TBR.

Now, like most people, some of those are reference books, some are classics I swore to myself I’d read someday, some are gifts or requests that I’m not really interested in reading but can’t bring myself to toss, some are sequels in series I’m not interested in finishing, etc. My point is that I have almost 3,500 books listed as To Be Read, but we all know I won’t and never intended to read all ~3,500.

But when your library start to reach those sorts of numbers you expect to  find titles repeating. And here we get to the crux of this challenge. I happened to notice recently that I have five books titled Bound By Blood on my ebook shelf and I joked that it would be fun to read them all at once. Then, I stopped and decided that wasn’t so much a joke, as something I could actually do. They all happen to be either stand alone books or first in a series. So, why not?

For the next week or so, that’s what I’m doing. I’m challenging myself to read all five of them back to back.* They are (in alphabetical order):

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It’s tempting to expand on this idea. I have another whole series titled Bonded by Blood, at least two books called Blood Bound, and M.F. Soriano’s Blood Brothers (Bound by Blood, #1). But I’m sticking to my guns here and maintaining the exact phrasing of Bound by Blood. Pending none end up on the Did Not Finish pile, each will have a review-post in the coming week and if there is anything of interest in the similarities/differenced (for example, I think they are all vampire books) I’ll write a concluding post. Look forward to it.

*I’m not OCD, but I have a few OCD-like moments. That there are 5, not 6 books on this list and therefore the last row is incomplete, leaving the whole thing looking staggered was almost enough to force me to buy another book by this title just to fill the spot. I resisted, but just barely. 

 

 

For The Bite Of It

Book Review of For The Bite Of It, by Viki Lyn & Vina Grey

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For the Bite Of ItI bought a copy of For The Bite Of It, by Viki Lyn & Vina Grey.

Description from Goodreads:
A vampire, a cupcake, plus one sexy cop, is a recipe for trouble.

VINCENT KAMATEROS is an exiled vampire making a routine living as the owner of a cupcake bakery in Arizona. Until a car with a dead driver crashes through the wall of his shop, bringing after it, All-American, closeted cop, JOHN REEDER. Smitten the instant he sees John, but bound to silence by the Vampire High Council, he can never reveal his true self to John. 

John Reeder can’t control his attraction to the sexy Italian baker. But as addictive as the sex is, John can’t overcome his fear of rejection for being gay, and open his heart to a man with so many secrets.

Review:
A note before I begin: There are apparently two versions of this book, one from 2011 and one from 2014. I read the newest one, which is said to have a different ending than the first. 

This book was at best OK. It wasn’t quite bad, but I can’t call it particularly good either. The vast majority of it is about two men who fall in lust/love at first sight and then spend 180+ pages fantasising about one another, while fighting in real life. Thus, they don’t get together for a long time and the reader just gets more fantasies. This is not a format that works for me. In fact, I got quite annoyed with it after a while.

This was only one of several problems, however. The men are said to feel things for one another that they’ve never felt before. But the connection is instant and there isn’t any reason given for it. The vampires don’t find destined mates or anything like that, which could excuse the mysterious rise of feeling between the two of them, but not previous lovers. If something out of the ordinary happens, I like to know how or why.

Then there are the inconsistencies. For example, Angelo encourages Vincent to “scratch the itch’ with John, then he repeatedly tells Vincent he can’t have John, then he’s daring Vincent to tell John the truth (breaking rules he previously said were the reason Vincent couldn’t have John), then he’s telling Vincent he’s crazy for trying to make a relationship work and refusing to help. Back and forwards. Similarly, John and Vincent are wishy-washy-wishy-washy, changing their minds about each-other constantly.

Worst of all is the attempt to bring a bigger story into the book. Again, the vast majority of the book is John and Vincent lusting over one another, pushing each-other away, and then pulling each-other back again. But slipped in between all of this are little bits of Vincent’s pedigree, history and future responsibilities. And this looked to be an interesting story…that isn’t developed AT ALL. In fact, every time there was a chapter dedicated to it, it literally (and I’m careful of my use of that word) feels like someone has dropped a chapter from a different book in by mistake. This was both a waste of a good storyline and an annoyance. (I wonder if Viki wrote the romance and Vina wrote the fantasy parts, or visa versa. That might explain it.)

Then there were a number of smallish irritants. For example, John and Vincent repeatedly stated to one another how good the sex between them was. However, they’d never had actual sex. (They finally did at about 98%, but this annoying habit crept in very early in the book.) If the BJ or hand-job, or fingering is good, that’s great, and maybe I’m being pedantic, but it’s not sex (at least not by erotica standards) and I found the repeated reference to it as such grating.

The editing also seemed to really fall apart for the last 15 or so percent of the book. Both inconsistencies in the plot and missing/misused words increased. (I wonder if this is about the place where the additional ending was added in the new addition.)

Anyhow, a passable read. I’m not sorry to have read it, but I’m not rushing out for more either.

Dark Moonlighting

Book Review of Dark Moonlighting, by Scott Haworth

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Dark MoonlightingAuthor, Scott Haworth sent me a copy of Dark Moonlighting.

Description from Goodreads:
Nick Whittier, having been alive for six centuries, has had plenty of time to master three professions. In a typical week he works as a police officer, lawyer and doctor and still finds time to murder someone and drink their blood. He used to feel guilty about the killings, but now he restricts himself to only eating the worst members of society. Few people in Starside, Illinois seem to care about the untimely deaths of spam e-mailers, pushy Jehovah Witnesses and politicians. However, the barriers between Nick’s three secret lives start to crumble when a mysterious man from his past arrives in town seeking revenge. Nick must move quickly to prevent the three women in his life, and the authorities who are hunting him, from discovering his terrible secret.

Review:
Dark Moonlighting is a bit hard to review. It’s satire and as satire it’s quite funny. If I hadn’t known going in that it was meant to be sarcastic, I’d probably be accusing the author of having the sense of humour of a 5th grader, but as purposeful humour it’s pretty good. I’d recommend the book for anyone who’s familiar with or has a love for TV cop and medical dramas.

The problem is that the joke got old at about half way through the book. At about that point, two things happened roughly simultaneously. One, the jokes (for lack of a better word) became predictable and thus lost their lustre, and two, the satire went from being relatively subtle to openly interacting with/through the characters and story. This made the whole thing feel slapstick and clumsy instead of cleaver and satirical (even when some of this same clumsiness was, in itself, a satire). Dr. Condo and the FBI agents were especially heavy-handed and groan-inducing.

The writing is pretty good. I found it to be well edited. I enjoyed the autobiographical nature of the story and especially liked the ending. All and all, an enjoyable enough book, even if I preferred the first half to the second.