Book Description
Porto, Portugal—home to writers and poets, to revolutionaries and dreamers. And down the river to the sea, a grand estate rises on green hills of latticed vineyards—the home of the powerful and deadly vampire who rules Portugal.
Darkly handsome and charming, Lord Antônio Silveira is a warrior at heart. But his future was warped in an instant when he defended his Sire against overwhelming odds and emerged not only victorious, but the Vampire Lord of Portugal in his own right. It was a title he never sought, but one he will defend to the death.
Rachel Shepherd knows nothing of loyalty or family. Abandoned by her powerful mother to be raised as an orphan, she is chosen to serve an ancient society as an assassin, a weapon to be pointed and fired with always fatal consequences. But Rachel has begun to question those who command her to kill, and when they send her against a vampire lord known for his ferocious battle skills, she begins to wonder if maybe, this time, her superiors are hoping she'll die trying.
Brought together by a threat to both their lives, Antônio and Rachel join forces to reveal their true enemies and drag them from the shadows, where together, vampire and assassin will decide who lives and who dies, and ensure an end to their enemy's poisonous intrigues. It is time at last for the hunters to become the hunted…
My Review
Rachel is given up by her mother who is a powerful woman. She used her small daughter to gain the favor of the people and get the position of power she wanted but we never really find out how she used her daughter for that or why she had her in the first place. When Rachel is little her mother gives her over to a boarding school where she is trained to become an assassin. But when she is a little older she finds her mother and confronts her and her mother tells her she never wanted her in the first place. She doesn't see her again after that for a long time.
Rachel works for The Society and they assign her who to kill. She knows if she doesn't carry out their orders, she could be the next one on the kill list. But they seem to want her to be killed by her job since they keep giving her really hard assignments like assassinating a very powerful vampire lord. She isn't sure they actually want her to make it out alive.
The thing is we don't even see Rachel and Antonio together and talking until around the 44 percent mark of the book. Before that we get a lot of her background and the plans on how she's going with Lady Inge to be her translator which will be her way in to meet Antonio and seduce him so she can find him when he's in his vampire sleep during the day and kill him. The only problem is Lord Antonio is a very powerful vampire and can stay awake and even out in the sun during the day for sometime. So that really blew her plans out of the water.
The first half of this book was very boring. The two main characters don't even meet until almost halfway through the book. There were so many pages of descriptions that really could have been shortened. The lack of action, dialogue and storyline really made this book hard to read because it was boring to the point of me having to put it down and come back to it several times while I was reading.
The vampire politics were nothing short of boring and really made this story drag out, almost to the point that I almost stopped reading it but I was really hoping it would get better which never happened. Antonio is supposed to be this powerful vampire who turns beserker at times when he's really angry, but I just didn't see it. When he finds out what and who Rachel really is and why she's really there, I expected him to get really angry but he didn't and that just didn't seem like his personality at all.
Rachel is a deadly assassin who has been raised to hate the supernatural being she kills but she finds herself attracted to Antonio right away to the point that she has a hard time concentrating. I would have thought her training would help her through that but it didn't seem to. I found that far fetched, I would have found it more plausible if she had fought the attraction a little harder, but she didn't. It just wasn't believable. The ending was very predictable and made the story something I just rolled my eyes at. I usually like vampire romance stories but this one didn't live up to my expectations.
I give this book 1 out of 5 stars.
Disclosure: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.