Review of First Drop of Crimson by Jeaniene Frost

*There are spoilers in this review, beware before you read*

From the back cover

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Night Huntress series comes a breathtaking new journey to the dark side of desire.

The night is not safe for mortals.  Denise MacGregor knows all too well what lurks in the shadows--her best friend is half-vampire Cat Crawfield--and she has already lost more than the average human could bear.  But her family's past is unwrapped in secrets and shrouded in darkness--and a demon shapeshifter has marked Denise as prey.  Now her survival depends on an immortal who lusts for a taste of her.

He is Spade, a powerful, mysterious vampire who has walked the earth for centuries and is now duty-bound to protect this endangered, alluring human--even if it means destroying his own kind.  Denise may arouse his deepest hungers, but Spade knows he must fight his urge to have her as they face the nightmare together...

Because once the first crimson drop falls,

they will both be lost.

I knew when I first read about Spade in Halfway to the Grave that he'd have a greater purpose.

First Drop of Crimson shows how much Spade opens up and shows his true self through out the plot line.  He is differentiates from Bones slightly by how his wit comes through and what he will do even if he has to kill for Denise just to keep her safe.  He knows she is still broken, but when Crispin reveals what has happened to Denise, including suffering a miscarriage after the battle, Spade comes to realize how fragile yet how tough she is in her battle to find Raum.

Denise MagGreagor is a human who has just dealt with the burial of her aunt and cousin and her cousin Paul is murdered in front of her, instead of being afraid, she pulls out her can of mace and silver nitrate thinking the person who is murdering her cousin is a vampire only to find out that he is Raum, a corporal demon, a demon who has his own form and needs to be invited in wherever he goes.  Denise is dealt the hand of hell by Raum branding her with his power and all the shit that goes with it.  With that power, she is forced to find her ancestor Nathaniel who had summoned Raum, only not to pay him for this new gift.  While dealing with PTSD, she finally comes 'round to loving Spade and seeing that he loves her for who she is and not what she isn't even if it means that she is a shape-shifting demon.  Spade at the end finds this as a good thing, seeing it as that she is no longer weaker and is safer being the demon she is.

Like Cat and Bones aka Crispin, Denise and Spade make a couple that can over come anything even if it seems hopeless sometimes and the stakes are high. I give them both a lot of credit for what they have been through and all that they will deal with, especially dealing with the rude bit of a prick Ian, so for this review, Mrs. Jeaniene Frost earns her self another A+ and a gold star on plot and character development and everything you expect to find in her novels. 

Review of Vamps by Nancy A. Collins

*Spoilers are in here for those who have not read this book*

From the back cover

NIGHT SCHOOL NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD.

When the sun goes down, New York's true elite head to one place: Bathory Academy, where the young ladies of the finest vampire families are trained in shapeshifting and luring their prey.

Bathory's reigning queen, Lilith Todd, is the daughter of a powerful vampire businessman, and she knows exactly what she wants from life.  She wants to look beautiful for eternity and party till the sun comes up with her gorgeous boyfriend, Jules.  And she doesn't want any New Blood upstarts standing in her way.

Enter Cally Monture, an unexpected threat from a trash zip code. When their first meeting leads to tragic results, Lilith is hungry for revenge.

I've eyed this book series for a couple years and was shocked to find it on the shelf the used book store Book Nook in Boyertown, PA.  It was a worthy investment.

From the beginning to the end, Vamps is told in the different voices of the characters, especially Cally Monture and Lilith Todd.

The intrigue of Cally is when you first meet her, she appears when Lilith and her friends decide to go "slumming" in the park, aka looking for an easy target to get a good bit of blood from after being caught drinking from a human at their private vampire club in Manhattan.  Cally is a "new blood" who too was out "slumming" in the park when Lilith and her friends go out for some fun.  Much to Lilith's surprise, Cally is a stormgatherer.  A vampire who can summon strong winds, lightening in her hand, and bring attention to them during their fight.

The attention they gather is from the Van Helsing's, a group of vampire hunter's descended from Abraham Van Helsing himself.

Lilith blames Cally for catching the attention of the Van Helsing's in the park disguised as drug dealers.

While Cally runs down into the subway tunnel, she notices a guy she thinks is an EMO, and can feel she has a connection with him, while also thinking he hasn't noticed her.  But she is wrong, so very wrong, while she takes the train up north to her home, she finds out after she gets off the subway, that he too, has noticed her.  She sends a squirrel after him, then goes back after the guilt starts kicking in and subsequently also saves him from being run over by a train by keeping on the bottom of the track.  After she starts to leave, she gets his name. Peter.

The next night she goes to a club where she knows she can slum without being caught and finds out Peter is none other than a Van Helsing.  And if thing's cannot get worse for the character, she finds out that her father who has not been in her life has decided that she must leave her New Blood school, Varner.  Though, not liking it, Cally tells her friends who are also new bloods, that she is being sent to Bathory Academy.  Like she were a piece of gum on someone's shoe, they leave her making up the excuse about a fake test they have the next day at Varner to show her disapproval and betrayal for what she is going to do.

After going to her orientation at the "grotto" of Bathory Academy, she finds the girl Lilith Todd also attends the school, and instantly she has become the queen bee's enemy.  Cally learns that not all hope is lost and that some people accept others for who they are, including her scrivening teacher who becomes impressed with how very well she is at the ancient writing, her new half blood friend's Bella Maledetto and her twin sister Bette, who's father is very kind to Cally after learning what she did to help help his daughter.

Lilith Todd is the perfect Yang to Cally's Yin and the two make a perfect protagonist-antagonist balance to each other when it comes to the plot line.  For Vamps, I give the book and Nancy A. Collins a well deserved A and a gold star for an intriguing plot-line. 

Review of Fallen and Torment

*Warning this post has spoilers* 

There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce—and goes out of his way to make that very clear—she can't let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.

Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, Fallen is a page turning thriller and the ultimate love story.

Hell on earth.

That’s what it’s like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel.
It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts—immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn’t told her everything. He’s hiding something—something dangerous.
What if Daniel’s version of the past isn’t actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else?

The second novel in the addictive FALLEN series . . . where love never dies.

For the first book Fallen, I will say its been sometime since I last read it, but the memories and the feeling I had falling into the book is still fresh in my memory. Lucile "Luce" Prince is like any other girl---or maybe not, Luce is sent away to Sword and Cross a school for troubled kids after her boyfriend is killed after catching fire just from kissing her at a beach party the summer before her junior year, (please correct me if I'm wrong in the comments and I will put the right information in the edit of this).  While there, she falls for a guy Daniel Grigori who tries to avoid her at all cost while trying to make it in the hell hole of school where everyone is troubled.  This book was very good and I give Mrs. Kate props for writing it.  So for Fallen, I give it an A. 

For the second book Torment , I could barely read it.  I'd seen people see it as a crappy novel and I will agree.  By the time I had finished it I had mostly skimmed over the rest of the book.  For Torment, it could have used more work before being published.  So for Torment, I give it a D- to an F depending on whom else had read it.  Passion's story line looks better written than Torment's. 

Review of Halfway to the Grave

*Spoilers for anyone who hasn't read this book*

Flirting With The Grave...

Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father--the one responsible for ruining her mother's life.  Then she's captured like Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unholy partnership.


In exchange for finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs.  She's amazed she doesn't end up as his dinner--are there actually good vampires?  Pretty soon Bones will have her convinced that being half-dead doesn't have to be all bad.  But before she can enjoy her newfound status as kick-ass demon hunter, Cat and Bones are pursued by a group of killers. Now Cat will have to choose a side...and Bones is turning out to be as tempting as any man with a heartbeat.


Reading this book, I will tell you was one of the top choices to get for two years, and as I waited patiently for the day of my 18th birthday when my mother would stop worrying whether everything I read had sex in it, I knew seeing Halfway to the Grave on the bookstore shelf made my two years of patience worth it.  Upon reading it the character's Bones and Cat brought balance and new understanding to each other.

For Bones, Cat is new territory, when he first meets her, he thinks she is just an ordinary human till he finds out after pissing her off that she is the product of a newly turned vampire's rape and as she had grown up, her mother had taught her all vampires are evil and none could be good.  I loved how Cat found new ground in Bones realizing vampires aren't all evil.  Just from reading all the excerpts I could for this series I knew one thing.  Cat and Bones are meant to be and whatever was going to be thrown their way, they wouldn't let anyone stop them from being together.

So, for this book I give Jeaniene Frost and Halfway to the Grave the gold star or A+ both the book and author deserve.