Title: Immortal Valentine
Author: Ellis Carrington
Cover Artist: Trace Edward Zaber
Publisher: Amber Allure
Buy Link: N/A
Genre: M/M paranormal romance
Length: 33,000 words
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
A guest review by Jenre
Summary Review: A decent enough paranormal romance that lacked zing between the characters.
THE BLURB
After a heart-pounding brush with danger on Valentine’s Day, Caleb runs into a handsome stranger and decides to roll the dice on a one-night-stand. But things don’t work out the way anyone intended when Caleb gets sick unexpectedly. He wakes up alone the next day, extremely confused and utterly embarrassed.
Angelo is an insomniac vampire who leads a solitary existence. He comes out of hiding once a year—on Valentine’s Day—to soothe one lonely human soul while drinking the blood he needs to survive.
But when Caleb falls ill, Angelo winds up connecting with a human as never before, and putting his own life at risk…
THE REVIEW
Caleb is a lonely guy who isn’t looking forward to Valentine’s Day alone. He bumps into a stranger who asks him out for a meal and since Caleb’s got nothing better to do, he agrees. Angelo is equally lonely and spends each Valentine’s Day picking up a random stranger, wining and dining him before using the cover of a one night stand in order to feed from him. A bout of food poisoning throws Angelo out of his routine and instead of sex and feeding he finds himself talking to Caleb and getting to know him. Before he knows it, Angelo finds that he’s developed feelings for Caleb.
This was one of those books which, whilst there wasn’t that much wrong with it, still failed to be anything other than a run of the mill paranormal story. Both characters were nice guys, if a little bland and forgettable, being the standard ‘lonely guy looking for love’ in Caleb, and ‘slightly tortured vamp with a traumatic past and now lonely and sad’ in Angelo. The way they meet is slightly awkward as I’m not sure how realistic it would be a anyone to agree to dinner with a total stranger they just happened to bump into in the street, not matter how hot, but once the guys actually start their ‘date’ the story flowed well until a certain amount of awkwardness with the ending, which I shall explain later.
The main trouble I had with the story was that I didn’t feel any connection with the characters. Much of their interaction together happens off page and although the reader is told how they talked all night or had fun just being with each other, I didn’t get to see much of that happen. Instead the men spend quite a lot of time either apart or having sex, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but did mean that the romance felt flat to me. I understood that they desired each other, and was told plenty of times how they have feelings for each other, but I didn’t see it when they were together.
The end was another sticking point. Rather predictably, Angelo’s past comes back to cause trouble and there’s the usual annoying thing of one character jumping to conclusions before running off without letting the other character give an explanation. If it hadn’t been for the character of Caleb’s friend, who rather stole the book in the one scene he appears in, I would have been more irritated than I was. Fortunately things are resolved quickly, if a little oddly out of character for Angelo. I finished the book thinking that the ending hadn’t seemed to fit the book, like it had been added to add some drama at the end and to resolve a loose end, rather than because it fit the smoother flow seen previously in the book. Other readers may disagree, but I would have been happy for Angelo’s past not to have been so firmly tied up. It was enough for me to know that he’d found happiness with Caleb.
Overall, Immortal Valentine isn’t a bad read. It has a flow to the writing with carried me along nicely and meant that I finished the book quickly. There were some good touches to Angelo’s character especially with his lack of sleep and amazement at how much Caleb has got under his skin in such a short time. It just isn’t a very exciting book, with characters who were rather bland and a plot which had a few odd moments. If you like paranormal stories, especially vampires, and are looking for a quick read, then this could be the book for you.
