Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. BLOOD. BLOOD. BLOOD!
That is all Aden pretty much thinks about the majority of this book. Victoria's blood in particular, but again, blood in general. The first chapter is he wants her blood, she wants his blood, he drinks from her, she drinks from him, he wants to drain her, she wants to drain him, they beat the stuffing out of each other. Nice, huh?
I wasn't sure I wanted to continue and wish I hadn't done so. There is nothing here that I enjoyed or appreciated, even brief moments. Nothing.
Aden spends most of the first half of the book shirtless, stomping around the vampire castle, glaring, giving terse answers, being unfeeling. His vampire powers develops as Victoria's powers diminish and cease. She has somehow turned Aden into a vampire, something which can't be done or hasn't been able to be done for centuries, but she did it. How? Who knows? Will we get an answer to that? Nope, so don't bother to look for one.
Mary Anne has run from everyone to try to find some answers and save all her friends from her draining ability. Rily finds her and they get shot by witches, almost dying. Riley force feeds her his wolf ability to save her life, losing his wolf ability and when she recovers her draining seems to have ended. Why? Will we get an answer to that? Nope.
The ranch where Aden and his friends lived is burned to the ground, killling one of the boys. Another of the boys set the fire while compelled by the not-quite-dead Vlad, Victoria's father. That boy also kills Shannon for no apparent reason. But sadly, Shannon is then brought back due to Aden's (through Julian) ability to raise the dead. Don't worry about that because they are in the vampire mansion when it is burned to the ground, likely killing everyone there.
We do get to find out in the final chapters that Rily and Victoria have slept together in the past, detracting from their romances with Aden and Mary Anne. Why was this even in here? I guess to make it okay when they all part? I don't know. Everyone ends up in a bad place; dark, dismal, sad, hopeless.
Do you know the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"? George finds out that all these people's lives, his whole town actually and the lives of hundreds of people he's never met, are better because of him, are better simply because of his own life, however humble and disappointing it sometimes is. Now, you are saying, why are you bringing that up?
Well, because this story about Aden is the exact opposite. He makes all the lives of everyone he comes into contact with awful, probably much worse than they would be if he had never met them. He ruins everything around him, not purposfully, but it still happens. Nice, huh?
But the real kicker to all of this, the ultimate insult to me as a reader, the pinacle of this mess is at the end, when the whole thing has turned into an absolute pile of wreckage, Aden will travel back in time changing and erasing all of it, back to the day he first met Mary Anne or putting it another way, back to page one of the first book in this series.
I give book-selling props to Showalter, but I truly hate this ending. So, I've read three books for a total of nothing? Really? Now she gets to start over and tell a completely different story? Really? How about just showing up and punching me in the face? That is how I feel. Gotcha!
If only I could time travel back to when I began this series and skip the whole thing. Sounds fair.