2015 paranormal romance. Courtney owns a failing antiquarian bookshop,
and has a joyless relationship with Mia. Then the gorgeous vampire
walks in looking for a rare book…
This is an extremely straightforward book. Vampires "came out" a
few years ago, and they're born that way rather than infectious; they
can live on animal blood, and they don't seem to have much in the way
of powers, but they have been forced to get serial-number tattoos. And
there are hate groups that just don't want those kind of folks round
here (or anywhere). So yeah, obvious symbolism is obvious, but
sometimes some fluff is what I'm in the mood for.
Courtney, one must admit, is something of a doormat; the one bit of
spine she shows is that she won't act on her love-at-first-sight for
Valeria until she's properly broken up with Mia. (Several times over,
apparently. Alas, since we see the relationship only at the point of
disintegration, it's hard to get any idea of what Courtney saw in Mia
in the first place, though there's some effort at justification.)
Valeria, or Lare, is elegant and sexy and one has very little idea of
her feelings at all.
What does get a little uncomfortable for me is a background point:
Lare's working on a way of making entirely synthetic blood that will
still be nutritious to vampires. When this happens, apparently, there
will be no more reason for prejudice against them. But I don't get it:
how is keeping synthetic blood different from keeping an animal-blood
bag in the fridge? It's still a sort of food that "normal people"
don't eat, and vampires still won't be able to eat normal-people food.
I mean, sure, you're not injuring or killing animals any more, but
presumably the rest of the world hasn't turned vegetarian while nobody
was looking. So… vampires have to alter their nature to fit into
society rather than being accepted for who they are? It's not of a
piece with the rest of the book.
Altogether very slight, but surprisingly enjoyable.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.