Reviewed by Roberta

TITLE: Electric Candle

SERIES: The Sleepless City: Book Two

AUTHOR: Elizabeth Noble

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 200 pages

BLURB: Sequel to Shades of Sepia
The Sleepless City: Book Two

When a vampire finds his soul mate, the bond is forever. It’s love at first sight. Or is it?

Flint, Ohio, Homicide Detective Jonas Forge has been a vampire for nearly two hundred years. He’s fought wars, seen life go from the simple but hard colonial days to the modern, high-tech world. He’s evolved with the times, adapting with each new era, blending into each new life. The one constant is his best friend and lover, Declan.

Until Forge’s soul mate tumbles, literally, into his life.

Even though they’re not fated to be together forever, Forge and Declan are perfectly happy. Despite the pheromone attracting him to his soul mate, Forge isn’t thrilled with the guy, and the feeling seems mutual. While trying to adjust to his clumsy soul mate and equally awkward feelings, Forge is on the hunt for the serial killer who’s leaving a trail of bodies, and who witnesses can’t identify. But Forge better watch out. When his work collides with his love life, things really heat up.

REVIEW: I was excited to read a story with lots of Paranormal characters involved.  This book didn’t disappoint.

Forge is homicide cop and he’s been feeling off his game lately.  He’s been anxious, unsettled and frisky and he doesn’t know the reason why.  Forge has lived a long time, about 240 years and to have made it that long without going crazy takes some skill and luck. Forge has always been a warrior.  He’s been a soldier in so many wars that it was natural for him to become a cop. He has such honor and has such integrity. Forge is the kind of man who would help out just because he can.

Blair is a young man who is trying to figure out how to survive being a newly (5 years ago) made vampire.  The only thing that he knows is from movies or books.  He’s never met the real thing before and so he thinks that he’s soulless and dead.  Blair has helped Forge and Company for awhile now, having taken over for his father who had previously helped the guys.  Blair is a good guy.  Never done anything to hurt another.  Just tries to live a good life and not cause any harm to anyone. Sweet, young guy who just wants to find peace.

The secondary characters in this book were great.  We got to see Simon and Ben from the first book.  They are still doing great.  Lucas is such a riot in this book.  He was just about the best thing for me. He used humor and being blunt to get his point across.  He just made me laugh and smile.  He’s one tough hombre as well.  Declan when he was on the page, was so very present.  I liked his character.  No matter what was said, Declan just seemed to have the perfect answer.  Moose, the dog was another character that I liked.  Could be that I like dogs, but I just really loved his presence on the page.

I liked the fact that this story had not just a romance going on.  There was an actual mystery going on that needed to be solved.  It was actually pretty darn cool.  I liked that there were so many relationships going on and yet, each one was so well defined that you didn’t get confused.  That you could understand where the MC’s were coming from in their own little relationship issues.  That was something that I really like in book.  I liked that even the villain of the story had good face time and yet, it was just the coolest villain that I’ve read in awhile. 

The story flowed so smoothly.  It picked up after the events in Shades of Sepia.  So if you read that book, you would know who all the characters were.  Even if you didn’t read that book, this book was more than enough to stand on it’s own.  You got to know the characters in this book just as you did in the first one without feeling like you missed anything.  That is the mark of any good sequel; that you not having to have read the first book to read the next one.

This was a wonderful book to sit and spend a couple of hours on.  The characters and the mystery were really on point and kept me entertained the entire time.  No getting lost or thrown out of the story.  Just sat down and enjoyed the ride.  Can’t wait for the next one to come!!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Dreamspinner Press