Grade: B

I love Angela Knight. I have enjoyed most of everything she has written and admired her in the past for breaking the mold of conventional romantic plots and daring to be different. She has a very colorful imagination, a way of writing her sex scenes without making them seem porny or contrived, and is just a damned entertaining writer, period. What I’ve noticed in the Angela Knight books that I’ve read is that the lady can write the hell out of a romantic hero. Most of her heroes are alpha, though not monotonous in a way that they’re all growls and male blustering; there’s more to them. This particular hero, Cade Mckinnon, is such an example. He won’t bow down before anyone, won’t back down from a fight, and will lay down his life for his lady. He is kind, noble, and honorable, but he is not without his flaws. What makes him stand out in my eyes is that he acknowledges those flaws and aims to change for the better. Too bad he got stuck with a whiny, little twit for a love interest! Why do these yummy, delicious males always end up with females who make you want to beat them down with the blunt end of an axe?

Our heroine Valerie Chase is a reporter trying to support herself and her college-bound little sister. She and Beth are orphans because when Val was twelve, her parents were brutally murdered by what she thought were vampires, but no one would believe her. The trauma would have destroyed her if it weren’t for Cowboy, the mystery man who visits her dreams and drives the bad memories away. Ever since she was twelve, she has been dreaming of this man. Whenever she has nightmares of the vampires who killed her parents, Cowboy comes along and slaughters them for her. For years, Cowboy has served as her friend, protector, and eventually, her dream lover. As soon as she turned twenty-two, she began having dreams where Cowboy screws her brains out and it happens every night. Lucky bitch! Because of this, Val has been unable to have a healthy relationship with anyone because she can’t help but compare them to Cowboy. When she gets fired from her job for reasons unknown to her, the nightmares return full-force and even Cowboy can’t help her. In her dreams, Cowboy has always been the most perfect lover, but why is he suddenly sporting fangs and glittering red eyes?

Unbeknownst to Val, Cowboy is a real flesh and blood dude named Cade Mckinnon. In fact, he is a vampire who was a slave of Edward Ridgemont, the man who killed Val’s parents. Ridgemont had compelled him to kill the twelve year old Val and her infant sister, but Cade breaks through the thrall and allows them to escape. Ever since then, he has been watching over them like a vampire guardian angel. When Ridgemont gets Val fired from her job so that she wouldn’t have a choice but to take the job that he offers her, Cade realizes that Ridgemont only wants to get his hands on Val so that he can turn her into a vampire. Though Cade swore to himself that he will never again meet Val in the flesh, he must now reveal himself to her, even if it means incurring her hatred. It is the only way that he can save her life… for real!

What makes Cade different from your average brooding, tortured vampire with a conscience is that he’s a man of action. He doesn’t just sit around in the dark, moaning about being a creature of the night and how no one could ever love a monster like him. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself and isn’t cynical and embittered despite all of the the horrible shit that’s happened to him. He has devoted seventeen years of his existence watching over a woman that he knows he can never have and he’s okay with that. He is forceful without being a bully and gentle without being a sap. My favorite scene in this book is when he and Val go into a motel and finds the clerk watching porno. He blushes and demands that the clerk turn it off because there’s a “lady” present. So adorable. What a yummy, yummy man.

Unfortunately for this book, Val is one of those “thoroughly modern” womyn who is constantly “cracking wise” and screaming to anyone who will listen that she is an independent womyn and doesn’t need anyone to protect her. She whines about everything, makes unfunny jokes to defuse tense situations, gets annoyed at Cade when he doesn’t laugh at her “jokes”, and tries to escape Cade at every opportunity even though she has seen for herself how evil their enemies are. She thinks she can take care of herself and Cade has to prove to her time and time again that she really can’t. On top of that, she is stubborn to the point of stupidity. She thinks all vampires are evil–which stands to reason because her parents were massacred by these bloodsuckers–but even after Cade shows her that he only wants to take care of her and make sure she doesn’t die, she still won’t believe that he only wants to help her. Writers, just because your heroines are “independent” and “strong”, it doesn’t mean that they should also be stupidly stubborn. A good sign of courage is knowing when to ask for help. She redeems herself near the end of the book and actually had me cheering for her, but too little too late, sweet thang.

My other beef with this book is with Abigail, Cade’s ghostly sister who floats around and pops up when there’s exposition to be relayed to the reader. It made the writing seem clunky and amateurish. Knight could have excised this character entirely without hurting the flow of the story. I winced every time I saw the bolded, italicized font because it meant Abigail was in the scene.

Oh, and have I mentioned how much I enjoyed the main villain of this book? He was evil, sure, but he was a sexy kind of evil. Maybe this means I’m slightly crazy, but I really dug him. He was suave, urbane, funny… and imaginative when it comes to punishing his victims. I was really surprised at how layered and fascinating he was.

Other than that, I really enjoyed reading this book and devoured it in one sitting. I wish Val had been less annoying and less of a drag, but the character of Cade more than made up for her. He’s just the kind of hero who sticks with you long after you finish the book and you find yourself comparing the heroes of the other books you read against him. Mmmmmm… Well, I’m off to read Secrets Vol. 14 where Beth Chase, Val’s little sister, gets her own story. And it’s a threesome, y’all. Squee!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.