Review: Under a Vampire Moon by Lynday Sands

Under a Vampire Moon by Lynsay Sands
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There was a really weird  disconnect in this one for me. I was really looking forward to Christian's story. And I still love the characters and the warmth in this family. I liked the new cousins that were introduced well enough. But the plot was 1) offensive. Sure, people choose to have beards because of horrible family situations, but it's not a subject for a romantic comedy, certainly not in 2012, we've come too far to make light this topic. And 2) the plot was really inconsistent with the characters that the author created. Carolyn was abused and lied to in her marriage, isolated and unloved for years. And the vampires who came up with the idea can read her mind, so why would they think that she's going to just forgive being systematically lied to like this? Tthey aren't that dumb. I know, because it's the only way that Christian can get close to her without her running from him because he looks so young, yada yada. Except the author wrote that insecurity about being older and determination not to date a younger man into the character. I appreciate having a story about a 40-something woman, don't get me wrong. And her being concerned about the guy looking so young might be an issue to a real woman, I can relate, sure. But this whole plot was written in such a way that it made me constantly uncomfortable for Carolyn about being lied to, or made Carolyn just look really stupid for buying into the gay story. And it made the Argeneaus seem bumbling at best and callus at worst. So just saying that he had to do it to get her to give him a chance doesn't work for me, I just couldn't buy into the author's basic plot premise for this book.

And then toward the end it got even more frustrating because the whole story suddenly wrapped up in one really odd scene. Suddenly she came into her sexuality and confidence, then of all times? It was so bizarre. Just like that, voilà, happy ending.

This is just one of those cases where it's really just time for the series to get wrapped up already. As much as I like this family, every possible premise has been explored already. The author expanded the possibilities by creating the enforcers and the secondary, slightly more serious branch of the series focused on them, but I'd really like to see her do something new and fresh at this point. Maybe it would give her a chance to get back to her really funny, witty characters because it wouldn't be the same thing over and over again. 

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