*Beware of Spoilers*

Dr. Greg Hewitt is wrapping things up at work at his psychology practice on the last night before his first real vacation in years!  As he is thinking of sand and sun and the things he will enjoy during his trip to Cancun, he notices a woman getting on the elevator with him as he’s leaving the office.  He was surprised when she gets off at the same garage level as he does, but wasn’t that concerned about it.  But he can’t understand what has come over him when he puts himself in the trunk of the woman’s car, goes home with her, and then obediently goes upstairs lies on the bed and allows her to tie him to the bed.

The woman is Marguerite Ageneau, a vampire, who has decided to give Greg to her daughter, Lissianna, as a birthday gift.  Lissianna is a vampire that faints at the sight of blood and Greg specializes in curing phobias and Marguerite wants him to cure Lissianna so she can live a normal life and feed from bags of blood like most vampires instead of taking chances by feeding off live donors, which sometimes leads her to getting drunk or worse when she doesn’t notice the condition of her dinner until it’s too late.

Lissianna feels bad that Greg is being held against his will because of her.  So she and her cousins sneak Greg out of the house and take him home, but they forgot to erase his memories.  So Lissianna’s mom and aunt go to take care of it, but are unable to wipe his memories and worse, he has figured out what they are.  So they take him back home with them and contact the council to determine what must be done.

Lissianna takes Greg on the run when she finds out that nobody can erase Greg’s memories and she worries what that will mean for him.

This series came highly recommended to me, but after reading this saying I was underwhelmed is an understatement.  I think my big problem with the book is that it seems too unrealistic.  A guy gets kidnapped twice and he’s cool with it.  He doesn’t even mind missing out on his vacation that he’s been planning for months, but instead spends a couple of days tied to a bed by a bunch of vampires.  The whole thing just doesn’t play for me, no matter how hot Lissianna is.  And the romance in this book just didn’t work for me; it felt too rushed and even at the end of the book they still felt like strangers instead of lovers let alone life mates.  Not to mention her phobia never gets cured.

I also found the vampires’ fangs were really strange in this book.  I’m used to them being used to puncture the humans’ veins for them to feed, but in this book they seem more like straws.  When they drink bagged blood they put it on their teeth and suck it down.  I thought it was pretty weird myself.

I saw the supposed plot twist about Father Joseph a mile away and figured he suspected Lissiana of being a vampire from the moment he offered her the garlic soup and didn’t really feel the office full of crosses was necessary to drive the point home.  If Sands wanted this twist to be a surprise, she should have been more subtle.

This book was marketed as being funny, but I just didn’t see it.  I think I laughed once.

“Still in Bed?” Thomas had asked with amusement, as Lissianna had blinked at them. “I am so glad you got at least a little rest today. I feared you’d work Greg to death while the rest of us tried to sleep.” 

The book did start getting better toward the end, but it just wasn’t enough for me to truly like it.  Maybe the next book in the series will be better.  One hopes so anyway.