- Release Date: April 29th 2008
- Pages:368
- Genre: Paranormal Romance
- Publisher: Pocket Books
So. . . I skipped around again on the Immortal After Dark series. I tried reading Winter Deeds, but it’s a werewolf book and the hero was too alpha and I could start seeing the plot points way to early on.
So, I jumped back in with the Wroth Brothers. This time we meet the elusive Conrad Wroth. A former Vampire hunter, Conrad rages when his brothers turn him into a vampire against his will to save his life. As a result Conrads’s spent the last 300 years as a mercenary, killing by drinking blood, something not tolerated by his brothers and the good vampires. They’ve been searching for him ever since. Can I just say how convenient it is they haven’t been able to find him for 300 years? It’s like. . . really?
In the roaring twenties, prima ballerina Neomi Laress is at the height of fame when she is murdered by her fiancé. Ever since then she’s been stuck as a lonely ghost in Elancourt, the home she bought for herself.
Nemoi has watched people come and go for decades, but when Conrad’s brother’s lock him in Elancourt to undergo “vampire rehab” and get him off the whole drinking and killing people bandwagon, Conrad becomes the first person to see Nemoi in nearly 80 years. Not that anyone believes she exists.
Now in forced proximity, the two began to fall for each other. There is a lot of tension added when you have two characters who can’t touch one another because one is well. . . dead. I also liked the revelation Conrad comes to in the midst of the book when he realizes the main reason he is falling for Neomi because she is dead, Conrad has a lot of enemies (cause you to know. . .he’s a mercenary) meaning he doesn’t ever have to worry about his enemies using her as leverage.
So, we’ve got a lot to work with here conflict wise. Can Neomi become human? Will Conrad’s enemies find him? How will Conrad feel about Neomi if she becomes human and vulnerable?
The second part of this book started to pull a few themes from the previous Wroth Brother novels but the pacing of this book picks up in pace towards.
Neomi and Conrad have a lot of great dialogue, as they get to know one another. They accept each other as roommates and learn to live with each other; one piece of dialogue includes a sex-positive discussion about Neomi’s past and I was glad the old fashioned hero didn’t get to slut-shamy.
This book is was great for paranormal newbies like me because Neomi is new to The Lore and she has to learn all the “terms” and “rules” along with the reader. This is just the kind of Paranormal training wheels I need.
