Review: Great Story,  Romance and Good Secondary Characters
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 17, 2013
I really liked this book in spite of the fact it seemed to follow a path well tread in the Black Dagger Brotherhood and Midnight Breed series with the Enclave being a group of warriors fighting a group of "bad" vampires but there are enough differences to make this an very entertaining reading experience.Kenric St. James is a master vampire in addition to being head of The Enclave and has not had any type of personal relationship in 300 years due to bad memories of the last time he tried.Emily Ross is just trying to reboot her life and forget some terrible relationships in her life including the last abusive one.The last thing either of them seem to need is each other but the story throws them together in a fateful way and since Emily is tired of men in general and controlling men like Kenric in particular it was not all smooth sailing.  The romance seemed to move in random bursts and many times a bit too fast for my tastes and took a goodly portion of the book before it became believable but it does accomplish that before too long.The big evil thing is a female power hungry vampire named Marguerite (and also Kenrick's sire) who is a very evil character and may be one of the best written characters in the book.  She really does do bat **** crazy evil b**** very well .There are some tragedy and other things in this novel that are hinted at but never explained and while I understand leaving hints for future novels in this series they were a bit irritating since the character of Markus plays a big part in this novel and his past and motivations are never explained adequately.Bottom Line:  This was a really good reading experience but could have been 5 Star with a bit more effort but as it is I give it a solid 4 Star rating (possibly a bit more or less depending on the reader) and will be reading the next novel in the series and hope that it can reach the full potential of this story.  The first novel in a series not being a full 5 Star novel is the norm but I usually expect the second one to step up in overall quality and I certainly hope this one does because there are a LOT of great stories in this world yet to be told.  I certainly hope my inner "revenge junkie" is fed better in the next book, for a book which says in the synopsis "Kenric St. James is out for revenge." by the end of the book I felt cheated out of that revenge on several fronts.