AUTHOR: Elisa Adams
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 58k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $6.99
Librarian Carrie Holiday is bored. Bored with her job, bored with small-town life, just plain bored. So when her sister Lauren asks for her help in finding Lauren’s deadbeat soon-to-be-ex-husband, Carrie agrees. The last thing she expects is that her sexy neighbor Luke is on the same case. When they agree to work together, her secret crush on him gets harder and harder to hide, especially when he flirts back at her. It’s just too bad Luke’s a vampire. And that looking for her brother-in-law just might get her killed.
I probably should have guessed it from the title, but when I read the blurb and excerpt on this story, I didn’t really expect the tongue-in-cheek tone of the entire book. The fact that it took me by surprise is my own fault, probably. Maybe that’s why it never really worked for me. It became obvious very early that the author was trying to be funny – or at least, to make Carrie funny – but I never laughed. I didn’t even smile. In fact, I’m pretty sure there was eye-rolling involved. Of course, the author created a heroine that talks out loud to herself when she’s alone – why, oh why, do authors do this over and over again? Most people just don’t do that – and I’ll freely admit that’s a peeve. But the repeated attempts to be humorous fell short for me, throughout the entire book.
That’s not to say I hated it. I didn’t. Luke, the hero, is appropriately dark and sexy, just like any other vampire. There wasn’t a whole lot original about him, but I certainly don’t have any complaints. And Carrie, while a shade on the side of annoying, felt marginally real enough for me not to dislike her. Their UST was pretty hot, actually, especially considering her body image issues – though for someone who at the top of the book claims to be perfectly okay with her size 14 figure, she sure did whine about it a lot. Even the sex was okay, which makes for a nice change from some of the other erotic books I’ve read recently.
In the end, though, I think that describes my overall feelings about the book. Okay. There wasn’t anything in it that screamed at me, Hate me!, but on the other hand, nothing jumped out, threw its arms around me and said, Love me!, either. There might be somebody out there, however, that can appreciate the author’s humor and enjoy the book more than I did. Unfortunately, that wasn’t me.
| Readability | 7/10 – Easy enough to read, though didn’t suck me like I kept expecting it to |
| Heroine | 6/10 – Too flipfloppy for my taste, and the attempts at humor didn’t work for me |
| Hero | 7/10 – Charming enough, if not all that unique |
| Entertainment value | 5/10 – The plot didn’t hold me, and the tongue-in-cheek tone grew old after the first third of the book |
| World building | 6/10 – I never really get that smalltown feel Carrie keeps harping on |
| TOTAL: | 31/50 |
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