Saturday, August 25, 2018

Review: Del Fantasma: Demonade by Melisse Aires


Book Description

Trudy lost her beloved sisters in eighteenth century Vienna, but she is a survivor. As a half human daughter of the demon Asmodeus, she is a psyvamp, ever young and beautiful. Unlike her dead sisters, she does not engage in relationships with men, instead she moves from club to party, city to city, stealing small amounts of life force from intoxicated young men, never staying long in any one place. She is lonely, but friendships do not work for one like her and relationships with men seem to be deadly for her kind.

The Del Fantasma is a unique place, friendly, where she can relax after her nightly hunts and alleviate a little of her loneliness. But Cody introduces her to a man, Professor Gabriel Di Russi, a former priest, a scholar of demonology who once was part of a secret priestly society that studied demons for the Church. He is not like the drunk young men she feeds from, or like the dying old men she sometimes marries. Gabriel is both fascinating and frightening, and he wants to interview her—and she agreed!


What has she done?


My Review

Let me start by saying that I received this ebook many years ago and left it with others in an email folder. Most of these books were won in blog giveaways. I just recently figured out how to open the attachments of seemingly lost pdf's that wouldn't open because they were years old and am going to read and review all the books that I kept in that folder so some things may have changed or updated from the copy that I have, including the covers.

Vampires, demons and succubi, oh my! Vampires, demons and other paranormal creatures are my cup of tea and this had them, which made me happy. Trudy goes from bar to bar siphoning off a little energy from people but never taking enough to hurt anyone. She doesn't stay in one place for very long which makes it hard to make friends.

She finds herself in a bar that isn't what she's used to, this one caters to 'others' as they like to call themselves as well as humans and they have a strict no kill policy. Everyone shares the space to relax, have fun and be friendly. Trudy finds herself going there more and more because she feels safe and relaxed there. When the vampire bartender introduces her to a former priest who happens to be there one night, she's quite shocked that he would be in such a place but even more shocked that he knows what she is and wants to interview her.

The funny thing is they both found each other desirable and were both scared to meet again for the interview, not really knowing what to expect from the other. I loved these two. Trudy just wants to be as normal as she can be for a while and Gabriel isn't a priest or demonologist anymore, he's just a professor but finding out more about her is something he can't pass up.

They end up falling for each other which was fun but of course something has to come along and mess things up. There's a huge twist in this story and I never saw it coming. This was a lot of fun to read and I plan to read more from this author now.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.