Review: Not a complete book, just an installment
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 3, 2013
I personally don't like cliffhangers.  I think they're a cheap way to get a reader to buy the next book, rather than relying on skill and quality for the next sale.  Yes, there are times when there is an overarching story line that extends past an individual book, but usually there's some sort of closure on one of the story lines.  That's not the case here.  This is not the first book in a series, it's the first 34 chapters of a longer book.  And even then, there is usually some indication that a book has ended.  Here, it cuts off so abruptly that you almost think you didn't download the book properly and the last chapters are missing.  So that would have thrown me even from a stellar book worthy of a 5 star review, which this isn't.On the positive side, the plot almost makes up for the downsides.  Talia is an advertising executive who almost loses her job, then conceives a brilliant plan to save her job by creating a Dracula theme park in Romania using the real vampire she has just rescued.  She assembles an interesting cast of secondary characters to help her, and along the way it becomes clear that there are larger forces at work.  But the quality starts to deteriorate in the last quarter of the book, so I skimmed it to find out how the story would resolve itself (because it really was interesting).  Only to find out that, behold, the story did not in fact resolve itself in any way.Other reviewers have commented on the fact that the heroine is very unappealing at first but warms up as the book goes along.  This is true, but she doesn't warm up very much and you never see what Drake sees in her.  Particularly since she is mostly just using him to save her job.  Drake is, well, sweet.  He does whatever she tells him to do, and doesn't have much of a personality.  I understand that he doesn't know anything about himself but that doesn't mean he can't have any depth.Then there's Pip.  Random child taken off the street who fits seamlessly into their group?  Fine, it's fiction.  Random child taken off the streets who starts calling them "mom" and "dad" immediately?  Especially since they're not a couple and Talia doesn't have a maternal bone in her body?  Not so much.And the villains?  When they are exposed they are such caricatures that I wondered whether I had wandered into a parody without noticing.  A small example of dialog: "Patron, this woman is nothing to us ... We should kill her, share her blood, and revel in her torture."  Talia herself in the same scene refuses to be intimidated by "this caricature of a vampire lord."I received a free copy of this book in order to review it, and clearly I cannot recommend it.  A pity, because there was real promise.