The Vampire's Kiss by Cynthia Eden

Book Description:
An ancient evil. An unholy alliance. An eternal love. William Dark is a monster-a vampire who feeds on blood and fear. He is exactly what Savannah Daniels needs. A year ago, Savannah's twin brother and his wife were brutally murdered. Savannah swore a vow of vengeance against the man, the beast, that killed him. A beast that is now after her. Savannah needs William's help in order to keep her vow. She must convince him to transform her, to give her the kiss of the vampire, so that she will be strong enough to defeat the killer that is on her trail. Savannah and William enter into an unholy alliance: He will transform her and see that she receives her justice. In return, she must be his companion, his mate, for eternity. But Savannah soon realizes that there is more at stake than just her life. Because once she tastes William's kiss, she knows that she may be in jeopardy of losing her heart as well. And she will have to put all of her trust, all of her faith, into the hands of a man who lost his soul centuries ago.

I don't know what makes me read these vampire stories, ultimately I never like them very much.  But, when I read the description of it, I thought it sounded pretty good.  I had trouble with it, mainly because first, I bought it in ebook format.  I hate ebook format because it came in pdf and I have to read it on my laptop.  When I uploaded it to my PDF Reader on my iTouch, I had trouble with it, it was such a pain in the neck, so I then bought it twice in a different ebook format, so I wound up buying this stupid vampire book two times!  *bangs head* If it had been available on kindle I would have been fine, so live and learn, stupid me.

This is the story of Savannah who goes to William Dark who lives in this big house on a mountain somewhere in Georgia and is a vampire.  But, no one knows this except Savannah who has found his brother's diary - from 500 years ago!  William has been a vampire for over five hundred years and he has a complicated story, lousy childhood, brutal father, one good brother, one bad brother who turns out to be a psycho that turned into a vampire as well.  He wanted to be a vampire too!  Now he's a serial vampire killer on the loose who William has been trying to chase down for five hundred years - unsuccessfully.  He would always get to his brother too late - only to find the dead husk of a body that he's fed on and left dead.  What a life!

Savannah is dying of a brain tumor.  Her brother and his wife had been murdered by William's brother and she wants revenge.  The only way is for William to "turn" her into a vampire so she can be strong enough to kill his awful brother.  At first William tries to brush her off and scare her with his red eyes and long fangs, but it doesn't work.  Instead he's turned on by her, never in all the lonely years as a vampire has a woman made him feel the way Savannah makes him feel.  He must have her. 

He makes a bargain with her, if he turns her into a vampire (three bites in the neck and commingling of his mighty powerful vampire blood) then she must remain with him forever as his mate.  Forever.   Hmm, tough decision.  She has to take some time to think it over.  After one night, she agrees.  They have special vampire blood sucking sex and of course it's fantastic and soon he's teaching her the ins and out of being a vampire, but she's not completely a vampire yet.  She needs to be bitten by him three times.

But William's brother isn't waiting for Savannah to be ready, he's terrorizing more people, including her best friend Mary who is all the way in Seattle.  Savannah flies to Seattle to be with Mary in the hospital and almost gets killed by William's brother.  William flies (on his own power) there and saves her in time.   Just barely.  In the nick of time William turns her and together they battle his brother.

Now, I bet you're wondering whatever happened to the good brother?  Well, he died five hundred years ago and William has blamed himself for his death all these years.  Now, we find out that it was really William's bad brother who really killed him - all the more reason to hate this psycho.

Lots of revelations emerge about William, and he's really not as "dark" as we are to believe.  He's an anguished vampire who falls in love with Savannah, but he wants to do the noble thing and once his brother is finally dead and gone, he releases Savannah from their bargain.  He doesn't want to force her to stay with him, he wants her to stay because she wants to.  I wasn't surprised, but of course by this point (after a week) she loves him and she's already a vampire, so of course she'll stay with him!  How predictable.  One thing that puzzled me is we never find out what happened to this guy that went to Savannah's hotel room to tell her that she's in danger.  He thought William was the vampire that killed her brother.  William then scares him off and we find out that his brother is probably going to go after him.  Definitely a loose end!

If you are into vampire books, you'll probably like this one.  Plenty of hot bloody vampire sex and if you're into that sort of thing, then this book's for you.  This was just not my thing. Was it because the characterizations were weak or because the plot was lacklustre?  There was just no energy to this book - boring.  I didn't care about anyone and couldn't wait to get it over with.  If I hadn't bought it - twice - I would have given up on it.  Thankfully, it was short.

3/5

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