This book got better as I got more into it, although I find the chick-litty cover quite jarring with the content of the book! (Killing and pale yellow? REALLY?) I did find it to be too heavy on the romance and too light on the action for my tastes, although it had some nice humorous moments. One thing that I found inadvertently hilarious was that Garnet’s ex-boyfriend Daniel Parrish and new boyfriend Sebastian Von Traum both had English accents. It’s such a cliche for American romantic novels to star men with English accents, considering the author got the humour right with religion/subculture-tester-William, she could have noticed and mocked this cliche too for good measure!
The author has done her research into Wiccan rituals and astrology, which gives Garnet, the main character, authenticity. However, Garnet likes to pretend she knows things about vampires that she doesn’t, and so a lot of questions I had about the way the vampires in the world of the book work went unanswered. The status of gods in the story was never clear either. Wiccans generally believe that the gods they invoke are not actual individual beings, but facets of a supreme power, but Garnet has a goddess, Lilith, partially and sometimes entirely possessing her. Catholic magic co-exists alongside Wiccan magic, but the author never explains how this is possible. I prefer Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series for world creation and action, but this wasn’t a bad stab at the genre.
How hillarious would you find it to know that I physically based Sebastian on a real Brit: Neil Gaiman?I had a seriously fan grrlish crush on him for many years.
I think the answers to some of your other questions (about Catholic magic co-existing, etc.) are answered in earlier books.
Also: did you know that the book is available from a British publisher? (Headline)
Thanks for your comment, Tate. That’s interesting, and I look forward to having my questions answered as I read more of the series.
The British publication is the one I read 🙂