Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Review: Love Bites by Adrienne Barbeau

Love Bites
by Adrienne Barbeau

Genre: Paranormal with Romantic Elements
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Cost: $16.49

What I Liked:
Well, for a vampire novel, I liked that it wasn't anything like Twilight. I'm really bored with angsty vampires and their human lovers.

Given that I haven't read the first book, it was nice that I could pick up this book (2nd in a series) and not feel like I'd missed so much I couldn't read it. On the other hand, I did feel like I'd missed out on the best part of the story.

What I really enjoyed about the book was the heroine's voice. It's told in first person (both from the male and the female perspective), and I found the man's voice to be unrealistic and a little over-beta for me.  But the female's voice was a lot of fun. Very modern and funny. I would have almost preferred the whole thing be from her perspective, but it was interesting to see the story through both characters' eyes. The nice part was that it was always obvious who was talking.

Will I go back and read the first book? Probably not. I liked this book, but there are a lot of other vampire novels out there to be consumed, and I'll probably move on to others. Still, the nice thing about it being a Hollywood Vampyre novel is that it was written by a real Hollywood star, so there's a good chance it's a real as Tinseltown gets.

Book Blurb:
Ovsanna Moore is a gorgeous Hollywood scream queen with a secret no plastic surgeon can rival: she's a 450-year-old vampyre. Yet when Beverly Hills Detective Peter King discovers that Ovsanna's pearly whites are really fangs, instead of grabbing a wooden stake, he asks her out. And a romantic Christmas Eve turns into a holiday of horror.
First the werewolf attack, then the mutliated body at the Sportsmen's Lodge, and finally, Orson Welles and Mary Pickford fighting for their careers in a rat disguise and a Cyndi Lauper costume, respectively... What's the just-getting-to-know-you couple to do?

It doesn' thelp that Ovsanna's personal assistant and sometime lover, Maral, will do anything to get Peter out of Ovsanna's life, including make a trip to the cemetery to consult with Marilyn Monroe.

Peter and Ovsanna have to fight for their lives. (And yes, even a vampyre can be killed--and if you've survived in Tinseltown as long as some of these monsters have, you know how to do it.) Ovsanna enlists her clan, the Vampyres of Hollywood, to help battle a coterie of supernatural beasts straight out of Alien vs. Predator. This is no ratings war, it's a fight to the death. (from the book jacket)

3 comments:

Nayuleska said...

The cover doesn't do it for me but I am intrigued by the concept. Great review!

Gossip Cowgirl said...

The cover didn't do it for me, either, but I actually liked the heroine a lot. She did not, however, have blue eyes, which also frustrated me about the cover. Get some color contacts, at least. :-)

But I do think that I like it better when Hollywood stars write about Hollywood culture. Otherwise, I'm always wondering "now, did they actually get that right" about details and things. But this one, I'm assuming, was as accurate as can be.

Thanks, Nayaluska.

Adrienne Barbeau said...

The cover doesn't do it for me, either, and I'm the author. I think it's a striking cover, but it doesn't represent the heroine at all. Did like the cover for the paperback of the first in the series, though - "Vampyres of Hollywood".