3.5 stars
Ughhh...I'm very conflicted on how I feel about this. At first, I was so here for the premise of a Dracula story about what really happened in his life and to the reincarnated loves of his life...I mean it sounds epic and romantic and exciting as hell. Even the vampire slayer angle was fantastic. Dahlia gave me total Buffy vibes in the beginning! I couldn't wait to see where their story took me. But halfway through, it felt so rushed and then lost the story completely. The whole idea of Dahlia being sent to slay Valtu - then her mission shifting to using him to get to more powerful/dangerous vamps got muddled and it became about her lying to him and him opening up his heart once again and being betrayed and my heart just hurt for Valtu.

There was some of Karina Halle's epic spice scenes in there but thee was also some spice that could have been done better if the plot was there supporting it. I will say Valtus dom energy was off the charts and I was drooling and panting through all of those scenes.

I’m left wanting with this one and the ending made it clear we won’t get much closure. There's so many lose ends and unanswered questions and the way the ending played out turned both Valtu and Dahlia into unreliable characters for me so I don't even know how I'd feel about them in the next book. It feels like the epilogue set up book 2 to be a repeat of Book 1 and if that's the case I'll be very disappointed.