Blood Secrets by Vivi Anna

Beautiful stylish cover to this novel. Lovely lyrical name for the author. Shame the story is such a stodgy piece of dross.

There is absolutely no point to this being a paranormal. It is basically a very lightweight, research-free police procedural. Unlike the author I don't like cop shows (anymore). What is worse, with the creation of a separate city for paranormal beings there is a strong whiff of nasty ghettoisation throughout the whole plot.

I'll be honest. I didn't care about the victims and I didn't like either the heroine or the hero. Every character is a cardboard stereotype of some sort or another. The heroine is NOT the whore her former lover says she is. But, by her own admission, she is the next step up, a groupie. She likes banging her work managers despite the fact that she knows it has compromised her career. But she still takes precedence in the investigation over the long-serving 'otherworld' team members. Because the manager hero has the hots for her. Yuk. There is nothing 'charismatic' about the hero. He reads like the usual over-fussy team manager. His being a vampire is completely irrelevant. In fact he spends much of the novel anally supressing his vampire characteristics. Why? Walk tall Sonny.

The only thing that gave me enjoyment in this story was the one or two pages where the chief baddie looks forward to doing lots of naughty sexual things with the captive heroine. I so wanted them to happen. But in actual fact the reader never gets to meet the baddie...he seems just to vanish into thin air. And there's another scene where the heroine fantasizes about being raped. How sweet. There is no romantic feeling whatsoever between the main couple. They just have sex.

The strongest images that came into my mind as I read the novel were of people snapping on their latex forensic gloves and striding down corridors from one room to another. The trouble is that I need more than that to be entertained by a story. As for that stupid scene where the main couple have an argument about who should go into the dumpster to look for the victim's severed head. DO ME A FAVOR! God knows how they would manage to co-operate if there was really any danger around.

Although this book was a complete waste of money it has made me appreciate anew the alpha-male vampire warrior. Of which there are absolutely none in Blood Secrets.

You will notice that I haven't named any of the characters. That's because the author's only talent, imo, is to give strong names to the drippy people featured in the novel.

The whole point of reading a series romance is that it is a quick read. This turgid mess took me days to finish seeing how I could only put up with a few pages at a time.

Basically. It's boring.