Reviewed by Donna

TITLE: A Different Breed

AUTHOR: Angel Martinez

PUBLISHER: Amber Allure

LENGTH: 160 Pages

BLURB: Josh hunts vampires to avenge his slaughtered twin sister. The only good vamp is a dead vamp, period. Richard destroys his prejudices in the first few moments of conversation and the sexual sparks ignite between them. Richard offers the stability Josh never had. Josh offers the healing Richard needs.

But an attack one evening leaves a friend in the hospital, Richard with a bullet through his chest, and Josh fighting to piece together what happened. Are Richard’s nightmare attackers real, or is Josh’s favorite vamp losing his mind? Is there a reasonable explanation or has the hunter now become prey?

REVIEW: I’m going to start this review with the disclaimer that I’m not a big fan of paranormal. Usually the only time I branch out in that direction is if one of my favorite authors decides to go there. I’ve also never read an Angel Martinez book before, but that’s a good thing because that’s the whole point of Author Week. Drawing attention to authors that our blog followers believe are awesome and deserve extra publicity. So basically choosing which book to review for this was a little bit like closing my eyes and pointing to a title. Which could have been a disaster. I’m normally very careful about which books I choose because I really hate giving bad reviews and I’m going to be honest, when I saw the cover, I got nervous. I am definitely not a fan of the cover. And I’m going to continue the honesty and say that when I started reading this, I wasn’t a fan of what was going on behind the cover either.

We start the story from Josh’s point of view. Josh is a vampire hunter for a rather mysterious organization referred to as The Guild. He spots vampire Richard in town and follows him home with the intention of killing him. He springs an ambush, they fight, their eyes connect and they share a “moment” which gives Richard the chance to knock Josh out cold. When Josh wakes up in Richard’s house he is baffled by how nice the vampire is and has the sense to admit that maybe he’s been wrong to hate all vampires.

But here is my only big issue with this book. On page twelve Josh comes to the realization that he’s been acting like an “old school racist bastard” towards vampires. Then on page thirteen he has his tongue down Richard’s throat. Page fifteen and Richard is in Josh’s ass and by the bottom of page sixteen Josh is allowing Richard to bury his fangs in his skin and drink his blood. When Josh gets past his intolerance, he does so in grand fashion. Had this been explained with the old “you are my fated one and only” routine, it would have been an overused concept but definitely easier to accept.

It wasn’t until about midway through this book that I began to get excited by what was going on. I assumed that The Guild would be popping up at some point to cause trouble but their entry into the book suddenly spun the story in a new and extremely interesting direction. Like I said at the beginning, I don’t really read paranormal but in my opinion Angel Martinez took this story somewhere fresh and exciting.

I need to check if this book has a sequel or is part of a series because Angel Martinez has now officially been added to my list of Authors I’ll Read Paranormal For. And I hope there is more to this because the author really did introduce a whole new world in the second half of this story.

For lovers of paranormal romances, especially vampire lovers, this book is definitely worth a look. I’m glad I took the chance to check it out.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Amber Allure Amazon Are