Review: Jeaniene Frost - First Drop of Crimson

World Huntress:

Book 1:

First Drop of Crimson: Spade AKA Charles and Denise

Summary:

New Year’s Eve night over a year ago (Night huntress 3 – At Graves End) Denise and her husband decided to spend New Years with the undead only to be attacked by Zombies, where her husband Randy was killed. Since then Denise has been avoiding all things Underworld including her best friend Cat who is half human and half vampire. When a demon shows up at Denise’s door she realizes that she needs some undead help and not wanting to drag Cat into this. The only other vampire she has access to is Spade who is Bones best friend. Spade agrees to help only because he doesn’t think anything is really wrong and he doesn’t want to disturb Bones if he can handle it and if he was honest with himself he wouldn’t mind seeing Denise once more. Ever since Spade’s human girlfriend was killed over a hundred years ago he has avoided attachments to humans, but ever since he saw Denise that New Year’s night he has felt a pull to her. So when she called him he was pleasantly surprised, if not a little concerned for her sanity, she has had a rough time of it lately. When Spade gets to Denise’s place he realizes they have a real problem on their hands, this Demon is not going to give up Denise and what he wants to Denise to accomplish easily. Against his better judgment Spade agrees to help Denise. Denise wishes she could just stay out of the underworld, she just wants to be a regular girl that doesn’t know anything about vampires, ghouls or demons, but yet again she is being dragged into the underworld and this time it is her life on the line.

Review:

I really enjoyed this book! I always liked Spade and am so glad he got his own book. In previous books he was always the one counseling Cat and Bones when they were fighting, always the voice of reason. Now, Spade is the one knee deep in emotions and dealing with a human female and he’s like a fish out of water. It’s really quite amusing to see the tables turned on him. Denise has a core made of steel, she has had a very traumatic time of it lately but somehow she has managed to keep her sanity. After the deaths of her husband and three of her cousins and now has a demon threatening to kill her, I don’t know how she keeps it together with only a little PTSD. Both Spade and Denise have to dig in deep into their emotions and their pasts to make this work and sometimes it looks like there is no way these two can make it work, but somehow they manage to circle back to each other. But for how long? Spade needs her to be a vampire or something with an elongated life span (He won’t survive losing her so soon after being with her and a few decades is a blink of the eye for him) and Denise refuses to turn into a vampire, is there any way it can work?

If you haven’t read at least through the 2^nd preferably the 4^th Night Huntress before reading this book I would highly recommend it. You don’t have to but a lot may not make much sense if you haven’t. And if you haven’t stated reading the Night Huntress series you really should anyway because it’s such a great series!

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