Occultober Day 21 The Vampire's Mail Order Bride by Kristen Painter
Occultober Day 21 The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride by Kristen Painter
The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride represents the light side of Occultober where witches and vampires and werewolves aren’t actually all that spooky. It’s all the fun of Halloween without truly being scary. I thought hard about whether or not to include it in Occultober, but then decided that there is a place in the celebration for the little town of Nocturne Falls where this book and the ones that come after it take place
The plot is pretty straight forward. Our heroine, Delaney, witnesses a mob murder and has to run for it. While getting off the streets to hide, she stumbles into a business that arranges prospective matches between lonely men and women—a modern-day mail-order bride service. She steals a file and impersonates the bride-to-be thinking that if she can just get away for a few weeks she can figure out what to do about her mob problem.
On the other end of this relationship is a four-hundred-year-old vampire whose grandmother wants him to get married and have children so she can have some great-grandbabies. That, by the way, tells you another critical point about this book. Vampires are really just people with fangs. They aren’t evil. They don’t appear to have a particular strong bloodlust. They eat regular food in addition to blood in packets. And really aren’t vampires by most people’s definition of the word. Anyway, our vampire, Hugh, hasn’t gotten over the death of his wife four hundred years ago. And he’s angry that his grandmother is interfering in his life, but agrees to give the mail order bride she’s arranged for him a 30 day chance to win his heart.
As everyone reading this review has already imagined, the two fall instantly in love but Hugh fights his passion fearing that he will cause Delaney’s death as he did his first wife. Most of the problems—an ex-girlfriend, the mob—really aren’t problems at all. They are just foils to force Hugh to realize Delaney is the perfect woman for him.
And it works! Painter has assembled a charming little town that celebrates Halloween every day and it’s just a lovely setting for her light romance with a touch of supernatural for flavor. I include it in Occultober for those who like to flirt with the supernatural without getting into the violence and bloodshed that marks most urban fantasies.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
