2010: #39 – Beneath a Blood Red Moon (Shannon Drake)

Book #39 was Beneath a Blood Red Moon, the first book in Shannon Drake’s Vampires series.  The back of the book reads:

Maggie Montgomery, the owner of Magdalena’s, an elegant New Orleans boutique, was shocked to learn about the mysterious beheading of a local street person, and the trail of blood that led from the corpse to her building. Her shock turned to turmoil when she met Sean Canady, the police officer who arrived to question her…inspired a dangerous desire.

Something powerful–and beyond reason–had brought Maggie and Sean together. Something that spoke of an interwoven past, and a passionate torment that began generations before under a blood red moon. For on that night, over a hundred years ago, disturbing events occurred within the Montgomery family, and now Maggie must begin a quest to find the one man whose love was pure enough to save her from the darkness within.

This was good for a little while, but it quickly turned into one of those "let’s throw everything plus the kitchen sink in here" stories. I was good with it when it was just murdering vampires tied into a hot and heavy love story, but then we have tie-ins to Jack the Ripper and the Civil War and by the time we got to the reincarnation I was done with it.  I actually gave it up about 75% of the way through, pretty much unheard of with me. And have I mentioned that these vampires follow almost NONE of the rules that vampires normally follow? Not even with variations.  This led to them being pretty much untouchable, and I think that what makes vampire books work is that humans have some way of being safe from them.  It’s no good if the monster doesn’t have a fatal flaw. So to sum it up, I was disappointed.

Page count: 383 | Approximate word count: 95,750

2009: The Lost Hours (Karen White)
2008: Envy (Kathryn Harrison)
2007: Wish You Well (David Baldacci)
2006: The Lost German Slave Girl (John Bailey)
2005: On the Street Where You Live (Mary Higgins Clark)

Used in these Challenges: 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Reading From My Shelves Project; 1st in a Series Challenge; Pages Read Challenge Season 2; The TwentyTen Challenge;