Review: Light, Fun Vamp Romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 24, 2013
~* 3.5 Stars *~Alice Shepard is thrilled about her sister's upcoming wedding, but the idea of attending alone and having to face her cheating bastard of an ex-boyfriend and traitorous ex-best friend makes her sick inside. She needs a date. Actually, she needs a sinfully handsome guy to act completely enthralled with her for the duration of a wedding cruise. And Alice is certain that her long-time neighbor, the gorgeous and enigmatic Noah Thorpe, is perfect for the role.Convincing him to go along with the plan is another matter altogether.Noah is in a bind. The Council, the group of vampires who rule his people, is pushing him into a forced bonding with a stranger out of some high-handed and misguided concern for his welfare. Though his best friends are trying to reason with them on his behalf, it's not looking so good for Noah's continued bachelorhood.Getting out of town for awhile may be just what he needs, and Alice's offer may come just when he needs it, but the idea of spending a week on board a cruise ship full of humans with his gorgeous but odd neighbor as his date is a hell of a price to pay to slip The Council's leash. On the bright side, sharing a small stateroom with the woman and having her alluring, addictive scent and delectably perky body teasing his senses every minute of every day may go a long way to footing that particular bill.~*~I don't normally favor paranormal romance with this sort of fluffy, romantic comedy tone, and the romance theme, drag-a-stranger/friend/neighbor-to-a-wedding-as-a-fake-date-and-fall-in-love, has been done far too many times for my taste, but I have to admit, there was something about the combination of these characters and Allee's writing that made the story work for me a lot better than I was anticipating.Alice was a little quirky and odd, but plucky and cute. Noah was all dark and broody in his own mind, but endearingly out of his depth when Alice is in his personal space and absolutely charming with her family. They had great chemistry from the start and I enjoyed their relationship evolution quite a lot, despite the week-long time frame.The non-paranormal elements of the read were fairly formulaic. The threads of conflict between Alice and her ex could have been in any of a hundred other similarly-themed stories I've read. I still enjoyed seeing Noah deal with him. The paranormal elements weren't as defined as I would have preferred, and they had a more understated impact on the whole of the story than I was hoping, but there were a few nice surprises and one twist in particular that absolutely delighted me.I could have done without the Big Misunderstanding as the relationship conflict, and I never felt Kane's sudden appearance made all that much sense for the external conflict, nor did I feel his motives were clear, but overall, there were no big issues that put a serious crimp in my reading enjoyment. Mostly this was just a sexy, fluffy, fairly superficial but cute read. It definitely provided more fun than I was anticipating. Enough to make me interested in reading more stories with the other sons of Kane.Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Covet publisher Entangled Publishing, LLC via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.~*~*~*~Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.