Title: Embraced By Blood
Author: Laurie London
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Sweet Blood #2
Publisher: Harlequin
Number of Pages: 384
Source: Netgalley
Release Date: June 21
The world created in this series is a unique one: there are two different types of vampires: The good ones, the Guardians and the bad ones, known as the dark blods, who want to live like the vampires of the old days and feed off humans-even if it means killing them. The good guys don't feed off of live humans any more. Both sets have their own internal politics and governing class. Alfonso worked inside the dark blood organization, and helped to take down their number one bad guy and now is the dark bloods enemy number 1.
The Guardians are pretty much like the FBI. They have different divisions and field offices. The trackers have one of the more dangerous jobs because they have the ability to track those with the rare blood type known as sweet-which is like a drug to vampires, and is what the dark bloods want more then anything. The Guardians want him to work for them (can't go into more detail without spoiling book 1) but he's not so sure about that because his brother Dominic who we met in book 1, works for them and they pretty much hate each other because their were on the different sides of the vampire world for so long. Alfonso eventually agrees to work with the Guardians because he discovers that the women he's in love with but had to break up with, Lily DeGraff, is in trouble because the dark bloods are now going after trackers-and that is what she does.
What I really enjoyed about this book was unlike in book one, we got to meet the people who went after the dark bloods. We are introduced to the team that Lily works with. They all take turns giving each other crap and aren't afraid to tell each other what they are doing wrong-both with work and their personal lives. The first half of the book is all about Alfonso and Lily working together to rescue a new team member that has been captured by the bad guys. The pages just flew by. I loved the tension between Lily and Alfonso. Both were super attracted to each other, but tried to fight it-for different reasons. Lily can hold her own, and while she might have her insecurities, she's not going to let anyone know about them unless they have to. I loved the banter between Lily and well everyone. She was just a kick ass heroine that really didn't like getting help from anyone-but accepted it when her superiors told her to. Alfonso is much more tortured vampire then his brother Dominic was. He wants to redeem himself to his brother and try to make amends to Lily for what he did to her in the past. Alfonso really wants to be with her-but knows it is not safe for them to be together because of the dark blood assassin that is after him for taking down their leader.
The middle of the book moved slow for me. I think part of the problem was that the pov kept changing. In the first half of the book we got Alfonso's, Lily's and occasionally the bad guys. In the middle though, it changed from those three to adding another dark bloods pov, and another Guardians and then went back to Alfonso's and Lilys pov. I realize this was to keep the storyline moving and to help set up the next book, but to me it was a little confusing and it was hard to tell which character was telling the story, but that could have been because I read this on my kindle and the paragraph breaks from netgalley were a little messed up.
While the middle was slow, the ending had just as fast as pace as the beginning did, and there was a lot going on. There was a lot more storyline involvement from the dark bloods, and I loved how the storyline between Alfonso and Dominic ended-I cried a little bit.What can I say? I love happy endings. :) The Sweet Blood series isn't your typical vampire romance-it's a little edgy, and each book just keeps getting better. I can't wait to see where this series goes next. This book works really well as a stand alone, but as always it does help to read book one.
Bewitching Book Tours and Laurie London have a giveaway for U.S. Residents. One lucky winner will receive:
1 Signed Copy of Embraced by Blood
Alfonso Serrano is a hunted man. For months he's managed to elude the Darkbloods, vengeful foes who won't rest until he's dead. But he still craves one dangerous temptation: Lily DeGraff, the sexy Guardian agent he'll risk anything to protect. Lily is a wanted woman. Her talent for tracking Sweet—a rare blood type that's addictive to vampires—makes her a prime target for enemy capture. Her only hope is the stealthy vampire operative who stole into her bed…then left her in despair. Danger aside, Lily won't let Alfonso near her heart again—until an irresistible hunger threatens to draw them back together… and into an assassin's snare. (goodreads)
1 set of Sweetblood Trading Cards to one winner
To enter, please state that you are entering the giveaway, and while you don't have to be a blog follower, it would be nice. Giveaway is open until 10:00pm July 5th, 2011. If your email isn't in your blogger profile, please leave it (example: buckeyegirlreads at gmail dot com) so I can get in touch with you if you are chosen by random.org as the winner. :) If I don't hear from the winner within two days, I will unfortunately have to pick another one.
I need your help! I've started this thing called 101 things in 1001 and need 20 book titles..so if you could leave me the last book you read, that would be great! (I have to ask 20 random people for book titles & read the books given to me.)
