Thursday Book Review

 

Night Ecstasy - bestselling author Rebecca York is set in New Orleans - the perfect venue for Londoner Jules DeMario. It's a city pulsing with every sort of forbidden pleasure - anything a three-hundred year-old vampire desires. Yet each encounter is a pale imitation of the grand passion he craves. And then he meets artist Taylor Lawson. Taylor has come to the French Quarter looking for an escort to show her the seamy side of New Orleans, something to open her to new ideas. But it's the aura of danger surrounding Jules that intrigues her. In Rosemary Laurey's Velvet Night, police officer Vickie Anderson has come deep into the mountains of Virginia looking for a little peace and solitude. What she gets instead is sexy Pete Falcon. For Pete, Vickie stirs a hunger that is beyond anything she can possibly understand - one he both desires and fears. Keeping Vickie safe from the threat hiding in the Virginia woods is going to be tough, but protecting her from his own deepening desires may be impossible. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom's Midnight Court introduces Christopher Dante, a creature of the night who is as cynical as he is handsome. He's used to Lord Rothchilde's infamous Midnight Courts-gatherings or debauchery, greed, and lust that are merely traps for guileless mortals. But he has no defences against the unearthly beauty of Rothchilde's future bride. Her enchanting innocence is a temptation he cannot seem to resist - and one that awakens the jealousy of his former lover, Elizabeth Rothchilde.

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The more I think about this trio of stories, the less sense the third made to me. I really enjoyed Night Ecstasy and Velvet Night, but Midnight Court made little to no sense to me. Dante's feeling were never thoroughly explained, and the emotion between the two characters never once remotely neared "love" for the sake of it being a romance. They played a game through the story, which unfortunately made Dante look like a fool.

Pete in Velvet Night was cute in a very dark, playful tone. I mean, who can begrudge a good looking vamp-guy on a hotrod? Although I wish there had been a little room to witness his part in the capture of the meth lab, rather than watching Vickie sitting on the porch waiting for him.

Jules in Night Ecstasy was sensitive and I think my favorite of the male characters. Their tale took them through a tangle of New Orleans that I'd never envisioned, and it could be fact or fiction, which made the story that much more engrossing.