Helpful Score: 2
This book is WRONG on so many levels, so much so that the reader suffers through cognitive dissonance while trying to understand the conflicting ideas behind this novel. I admit I didn't finish reading this book. The story starts off jarring and doesn't make anymore sense for another 150 pages. There are several flaws with this story but the most notable are as follows:
The back of the book reads as if the heroine, Alexia, is a powerful vampire queen who engages the hero, Declan, in a battle of wills. I was expecting some serious friction between two powerful characters who both believe they are absolutely right in their age-old Vampire vs. Dragon battle. Instead, Alexia quickly succumbs to Declan's advances and is pretty much willing to do anything for him because she's an abused woman whose stepfather-to-be has repeatedly raped her into being weak-willed, scared, and inconsistently straddling an unbelievable line between slutty and virginal. She is willing to jump into bed with this enemy of old and I have a hard time believing this to be romantic. Either she's emotionally and physically starved for affection to the degree that any sort of soft touch is grounds for becoming a complete puddle of goo, or she is sexually attracted to the only man who she sees as a bigger alpha than her stepfather and is "turned on" by him as a matter of self-preservation. Either way, these do not make a good foundation for a happily ever after romance story.
Despite being imprisoned by a crazy man who has repeatedly raped the heroine and beaten up to within an inch of his life the hero, Alexia and Declan have sexy times in a dungeon instead of escaping. WTF is that? Really, because I know I feel amorous when my life is in danger and every second counts? So within about 100 pages, Alexia has been caught getting it on with Declan multiple times and they've both been successively punished worse and worse. I'm a fan of romance, not of inappropriately scheduled sex. If characters are too stupid to figure out how to keep their libidos from interfering with self preservation from immediate danger then hand them a Darwin award and kill them off. They do not deserve to be alive and how can I enjoy a sex scene when all I can think about is the idiocy of the characters consummating their poorly timed, not to mention unrealistic, passion for each other.
The themes and names of the characters seem like they are poorly jumbled together ideas from other novels I've read by better writers. Even the title of the novel is reminiscent of the excellent 2000 movie of the same name.
And read my rant about inappropriate use of rape in romance novels in my review of Michele Hauf's Her Vampire Husband, which boils down to a good lay does not fix emotional and physical abuse and how the heck can someone believe in true love between two characters if these kinds of issues are not appropriately handled?
This is a really poorly conceived and constructed book!
The back of the book reads as if the heroine, Alexia, is a powerful vampire queen who engages the hero, Declan, in a battle of wills. I was expecting some serious friction between two powerful characters who both believe they are absolutely right in their age-old Vampire vs. Dragon battle. Instead, Alexia quickly succumbs to Declan's advances and is pretty much willing to do anything for him because she's an abused woman whose stepfather-to-be has repeatedly raped her into being weak-willed, scared, and inconsistently straddling an unbelievable line between slutty and virginal. She is willing to jump into bed with this enemy of old and I have a hard time believing this to be romantic. Either she's emotionally and physically starved for affection to the degree that any sort of soft touch is grounds for becoming a complete puddle of goo, or she is sexually attracted to the only man who she sees as a bigger alpha than her stepfather and is "turned on" by him as a matter of self-preservation. Either way, these do not make a good foundation for a happily ever after romance story.
Despite being imprisoned by a crazy man who has repeatedly raped the heroine and beaten up to within an inch of his life the hero, Alexia and Declan have sexy times in a dungeon instead of escaping. WTF is that? Really, because I know I feel amorous when my life is in danger and every second counts? So within about 100 pages, Alexia has been caught getting it on with Declan multiple times and they've both been successively punished worse and worse. I'm a fan of romance, not of inappropriately scheduled sex. If characters are too stupid to figure out how to keep their libidos from interfering with self preservation from immediate danger then hand them a Darwin award and kill them off. They do not deserve to be alive and how can I enjoy a sex scene when all I can think about is the idiocy of the characters consummating their poorly timed, not to mention unrealistic, passion for each other.
The themes and names of the characters seem like they are poorly jumbled together ideas from other novels I've read by better writers. Even the title of the novel is reminiscent of the excellent 2000 movie of the same name.
And read my rant about inappropriate use of rape in romance novels in my review of Michele Hauf's Her Vampire Husband, which boils down to a good lay does not fix emotional and physical abuse and how the heck can someone believe in true love between two characters if these kinds of issues are not appropriately handled?
This is a really poorly conceived and constructed book!
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