This is my book review of PRIMAL, a novel wherein four authors shared their primitive-desire novellas. I’ve reviewed the first two stories here. I’ve given them a combined rating of 4 stars. ****
1. Bleeding Heart by Michelle Rowen.
The collection started with this vampire story about a human woman who was injected with a serum thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her blood becomes infected and without a cure she’ll surely die. The short of it is, a bounty hunter-type, who kills vampires, but is part vampire himself, takes her with him to a research lab to see if this scientist can help her. The scientist is “mad” and turns on them, yada yada yada.
Toward the end, I found the injuries to the main characters to be ridiculously dramatic and, if the girl was only human, there was no way she could have recovered from the injuries she sustained. Even the bounty hunter recovered at a ridiculous rate. I know that’s his thing, but one second he’s dead on the floor, the next second he’s beating up multiple vampires at a time.
It was going okay, until I started to became bored toward the end. It felt like the pair were running around in the underground warehouse too long, down the same set of bland halls, with no reasonable purpose, when they should have been escaping.
After reading an excerpt from Michelle Rowen’s follow up novel, NIGHTSHADE, I became a little intrigued to read on. It’s a tough call though. It’s not the next on my ‘to read’ list, but neither am I writing it off.
2. Skin and Bone by Ava Gray.
What can I say? I love this author. The characters, Silas and Juneau, have an amazing connection that starts out when he saves her from a p
ile of rubble which is all that’s left to the southern country they’re in. Everyone she knows is dead. He was alone, hiding, from the start. As they make their trek to some form of civilization, he worries that she’d be afraid of him because he’s so big and scary looking, but she sees him like her knight in shining armour. I loved that.
I could not stop thinking about the characters connection. They were so in tune with each other. And of course, there was hot sex.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Ava Gray did a really good job creating suspense at the end of the story. Juneau leaves Silas, because they think it’d be best, when really they both want to be together and see where it’d go. Circumstances don’t allow for it and his “friends” advise Silas that if Juneau doesn’t contact him within one month after leaving him, then they’ll erase her memory because she’d seen too much. She contacts him on the last day, by email, but the mind-eraser guy was already on his way to visit her. Suddenly Silas is racing to her… trying to get to her first, before she forgets about him forever.
I was like “Nooo!!” But then he did get there in time, and I was like “Yay!!” 😉
I so loved this story. Purpose… Passion… and a Happy Ever After.
I’m curious to hear what you thought of these stories, if you’ve already read them.
Stay tuned for part two of this review.
Christa Simpson 