Traci Houston
Blood Drive

Review brought to you by OBS staff member Heidi

Blood Drive is Traci Houston’s debut novel that is due to be released in October of this year.  In it, we are introduced to Cara Evens, a police officer with psychic abilities that she has been trying to hide most of her life.  She and her partner have worked hard and are about to be promoted to detective when they go to answer a call where a silent alarm had been triggered at a blood bank.  While investigating the scene her partner, Danny, is murdered.  Cara finds an ominous looking metal object at the scene and takes it along, thinking that it will help aide her in finding Danny’s killer.

While conducting interviews with the people in charge of the blood bank she meets the owner, Jonathan, who she later discovers is a vampire.  Before long, Cara and Jonathan discover that there is some major chemistry between them.

Cara is being watched and followed by Jonathan’s enemy, Christian, who is waiting for the perfect time to use her to hurt him.   After Christian shows himself to Cara, she only escapes because of her lack of fear, sending Jonathan’s protective instincts  into action.  From then on, he always has her guarded by either himself or his associate, Thomas.

Then one of Cara’s co-workers, Mason, comes by and is worried when he sees her busted lock on her front door.  He decides to stick to her as well.

Cara takes Mason with her to visit her friend, Beth, and to try to get some answers about the metal object she recovered.  Thomas follows her there, but Beth senses his presence and eventually has him invited in.  Once Jonathan arrives he informs them that the object is in fact Christian’s.  Therefore, Christian must be the one that killed Danny.

Beth, Cara, Mason, Thomas, and Jonathan work together to try to find away to kill Christian before he can kill them in order to recover his property and get his hands on the ancient book on vampires that Jonathan possess.  And they have to overcome conflicts among themselves in the process.

I thought this book had a lot of potential.  But, there were places in it where I wish the author would elaborate a little more.  For instance when Cara is explaining to Mason that she thinks Danny was killed by a vampire.  Instead of saying that she told him her theory or actually detailing the conversation she tells him that he wouldn’t believe her if she told him and he says try me and, then it says; “She Did”.  Then he instantly knows about the vampires and I totally missed it and had to re-read the section to understand what transpired.

The growing relationship between Cara and Johnathan is nice and I even like what is starting between Thomas and Beth.  Mason was a very likeable guy that any girl would want on her side.

I felt while reading this book that it was obvious that this was the author’s first book.  I would have liked to have seen this book to have been a bit longer and the characters to have been a little more developed.

I assume this is the first book in a series since the book drops off in a cliffhanger.  I thought the book was middle of the road….not the best I’ve read but not the worst either.  But I honestly can’t say if I would read the remainder of the series or not.  I guess time will tell.