Night's Cold Kiss by Tracey O'Hara
Dark Brethren #1
The tension between the Aeternus, an ancient vampiric people, and humanity has been mounting for over a century. But when rogue vampires begin to drain humans in order to achieve an illegal blood-high, all bets are off.
After the death of her parents, Antoinette Petrescu devoted her life to becoming one of the top Venators, the elite hunters who destroy the rogue Necrodreniacs. Her kill count is legendary and her skills superb.
But now the serial killer who killed her parents has returned. And to stop him Antoinette must join forces not only with the Aeternus, but also their most legendary killer. One that is both dangerously attractive, and involved in buried secrets of her past. More dangerous still, a dark attraction grows between them--one that could doom both races.
Danger very similar to a dark time know as the "troubles" is brewing. Much to her dismay, rouge vampire hunter Antoinette teams up with the Aeternus Christian to try and solve a string of murders. Despite her utter hatred of everything vampiric and his determination to never let another human sway him, the two of them quickly find a strong attraction to the other. The odds are stacked against them and with the fragile truce between the races in the balance, the two must come to terms with each other if they are to have any hope of finding the killer before it's too late.
This book was slightly frustrating to me to read. It almost felt like Antoinette had a complete personality change halfway through the book. In the beginning she is everything anti-vampiric. She is one of the absolute best at what she does, killing rouge vampires or Necrodreniacs. She even hates the so called "good" vampires, the Aeternus. When Christian comes along she is rude and downright hateful to him. Of course there was an attraction there almost from the start, but then all of a sudden about halfway through the book it's as if she just turns into this puddle of goo for him. It's like her toughness just flies right out the window. And for what? Considering the fact that she behaves like it's just sex and nothing more, this baffled me. You just don't change your entire outlook on life based on some good sex, and while I'm sure there actually was some real love starting to brew I found it frustrating that it really wasn't shown.
The premise behind this book is really detailed. There is a lot of world building, but it isn't confusing and I didn't feel overly bogged down with too much information. There are plenty of characters to build upon in this series and all of the unique terminology is fascinating. I enjoy books that aren't very predictable and apart from the romance, this one wasn't at all. There were plenty of curve balls thrown in, and the identity of the character behind the problems came at quite a shock.
Putting the drastic changes in Anoinette's behavior aside, the book was pretty good. As I said before, the premise of the book and all of the different characters and races are really interesting. I think there is great potential to this series, as there is so much to explore. Based on the ending of this book I feel that the dangers have only begun and future books should prove to have plenty of danger and adventure. Overall, I enjoyed this book and I feel it's a sound starting place to a series with a lot of promise.
Rating:
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Night's Cold Kiss: A Dark Brethren Novel
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