Dark Lover
The Story
Beth Randall has been living in Caldwell, New York, working at an unsatisfying job at the local paper. Being kept away from the large stories, Beth is starting to feel like she needs a little bit of adventure in her life. Enter Wrath, one massive, gorgeous and dangerous purebred vampire.
Believing that she is an orphan, whose parents died shortly after she was born, Beth has always thought she was a normal human being. But when Wrath tells her that her father was a vampire who just got killed by a group of lessers (vampire hunters), her world is turned on its head. Neither Beth nor Wrath expect to fall in love with each other while they adjust to the changes their lives are taking, but things don’t always happen as you would expect them to…
The Review
Let us just take a moment to reflect on a couple of things. First, what have I stated over and over again that I am totally sick of?
- Urban Fantasy books that centre around romantic vampires
And what are the biggest things that I absolutely hate in books?
- Depthless women who are essentially Mary Sues
- Brooding and/or emo male leads.
- Books where the plot seems to revolve around characters trying to have as much sex as possible, to the detriment of real plot and real character development.
- Women who will give up all their morals or personality as soon as omg hot guy comes along.
- Vampire sex. Lots and lots of vampire sex. Because omg vampires are so romantic and sexy and not scary at all.
- Books where the main character comes across something that TOTALLY BLOWS THEIR MIND (omg, vampires are real?! And I’m turning into one?!) but a page later is totally okay and awesome with it, and doesn’t have to struggle with the fact that omg everything they thought wasn’t true totally is.
Basically I don’t like flakey characters or stories that focus solely around sex without any plot or character development or romantic vampires. So…. if this book had most of the stuff that I don’t like or am sick of, WHY COULD I NOT PUT IT DOWN?!
What is it about this book that made it consume my brain from the moment I started it until the moment I finished it? What on earth is in this book that has done this to me? OMG brain is blown.
Because I don’t know what it was that I loved about this book! I feel like a hypocrite loving it! And it’s a little embarrassing admitting exactly how much I loved it. Because I did. Even though there was so much about it that I hated. Like! Like the two main characters!
There are SO MANY people who LOVE this series and I have a feeling I’m going to get some comments telling me about how awesome this book is and how awesome Beth is and omg how could I think she isn’t a strong kick-ass female? But… I just didn’t get that from the book. As soon as Wrath came into her life, it was like her whole world all of a sudden revolved around him instead of around the sun. She lost her individuality in the span of a day.
And Wrath… can we say “tortured hero”?!? How much did he remind me of Heathcliff? And how much do I hate Heathcliff?!
But… but for every thing that I hated about this book, there was something in it that kept me from putting it down, that kept me turning the pages and actually wanting to know how things turned out.
The only thing that I can put my finger on that I loved was Butch, Beth’s cop friend. Even after Beth hooked up with Wrath, after he met Marissa, he still cared so much for Beth’s safety and well-being. He had nothing in life to live for, but his character growth when he met the Black Dagger Brotherhood was awesome.
I think that if the book was not about Wrath and Beth that I would enjoy it. And so the fact that the other books in the series don’t seem to have Wrath and Beth as main characters seem like a positive to me. Let’s just see if I can get over the whole “romantic vampire” bias that I’ve got going on.
The Bottom Line
This book consumed me while I was reading it, and yet I still cannot figure out why. It actually embarrasses me how much I loved it. I have a feeling I’m going to continue on with this series, but will probably take a break for the time being and attack some of those other books that have been sitting on the TBR pile for a while.
Other Reviews
Love Vampires, Best Fantasy Stories, 25 Hour Books, ReadingAdventures, Bitten By Books. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.
Shannon February 23rd, 2010 at 7:54 am
this review is full of lolz. well played.
kiirstin February 23rd, 2010 at 10:03 am
Ha! I love it. I know exactly what you mean. I run across books like that every so often, where even as I’m reading I’m all “really, what? this is so stupid, I can’t believe I’m reading it” but I can’t stop and even more, I love it. Just roll with it! There’s nothing you can do once one of THOSE books have you in their grasp…
Court February 23rd, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Shannon – I’m happy you approve.
Kiirstin – LOL. Yes, THOSE books tend to take you over whether you want them to or not, lol.
heidenkind February 24th, 2010 at 12:02 am
OMG, this book is brain crack! Why why why did you pick it up?!
The only JR Ward book I’ve read is the angel one. I was not impressed.
Court February 24th, 2010 at 6:29 am
heidenkind – ….. because a friend handed it to me and told me I needed to read it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have. LOL
Erin February 27th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Okay so I finished it today. Quick read actually, I thought it might take me longer because it’s fairly thick. I liked it a lot, but I didn’t love it. This is possibly because I just finished a series that I loved loved loved (Mercy Thompson books by Patricia Briggs), so I might have liked it a lot more if I wasn’t wishing I had more of the previous series… if that makes any sense. I’ll likely read the others in the series, mostly because I thought Zsadist was really interesting. Everything just ended up so perfectly though, which was actually one of my pet peeves about the Twilight series. And seriously? Their names? Redic. I think I would have liked it better if they didn’t all have stupid names.