Unearthed After Sunset

by Lauryn April

When Greg Erickson is killed by sultry and seductive vampire Lila, he wakes up cold and alone in a wooden box. After clawing his way out he finds himself thrust into a vampire turf war, unsure of exactly what he’s fighting for. Greg discovers that it’s not easy to be human one day and hunting humans the next, and while his new vampire cohorts try to get him to accept his newfound existence there’s one girl from his human life he’s unable to forget.

Caroline Christensen lived a normal life once. Then her brother was killed by vampires and her family legacy as a vampire hunter was handed down to her. When she meets Greg out at the bar one night they both feel a connection. Then Greg discovers Caroline’s secret and she worries he’ll never talk to her again, but soon she finds out that he has a very different reason for not calling – he’s dead.

Now Greg has become Caroline's target, but can she bring herself to kill him? Greg, however, isn’t Caroline’s only concern. The vampires are battling one another, and Caroline is determined to find out what they're fighting over.

Genres: Vampires, Romance, Paranormal

281 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2017

About the author

Lauryn is a YA/NA Paranormal Romance writer from Wisconsin. She has a BA in Psychology and when she's not writing works with kids with special needs. Her debut novel "Into the Deep" explores the intricacies of the adolescent mind and what it means to feel alone.

You can find out more about her on her blog where she writes about her experiences writing and shares her opinion about books. laurynapril.blogspot.com

You can also follow her on twitter @LaurynApril where she tweets about articles and blogs she reads, specifically related to reading, writing, and the reviewing of books.

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprising gem!

I really enjoyed this book and how the story developed. I’m a sucker for a storyline with characters undergoing tremendous personal growth and this book had that. It was an exciting read with a different approach to the whole “vampire-and-vampire-hunter” trope. I can’t wait to find out what happens next with Care and Archer!

[Lisa Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of some of the old Buffy TV shows. It definitely has a YA feel to it. There were times when I could not put the book down and was flipping the pages quickly to follow what was happening and other times, during soul searching or internal monologue, where I skimmed through the text to get to more excitement. It was a good story and had some nice plot twists and a sweet ending.

This book was given to me as part of a book review program.

[Indie Wish List · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review featured on: indiewishlist.wixsite.com/blog/

In most vampire stories I have read, the victim of vampirism loathes who they have become. In Unearthed After Sunset, that may be the case for the first few hours, but Greg/Archie/Archer, the male protagonist, quickly accepts his new life, killing humans and all. It’s actually cool to be in the mind of a killer without remorse. Archer does have his moments when he questions his actions. For the most part, though, he accepts and knows this is his nature.
The night he meets Caroline, the female protagonist, you can feel the magic between them. I loved that scene. The chance meeting, the instant connection, the simple kiss, Caroline writing her number on his hand in old-school fashion. It was a scene where you felt the promise of the future.
Yeah, that’s not how their lives turned out. The reality is, Greg was turned into a vampire that very same night and Caroline hunts vampires. So, no promising future for these two. ☹ But this book is the first in a series, so we won’t know until we keep reading. 😊
There is a lot going on in this book. The vamps are after something. Greg/Archer is learning all about what it means to be a vampire. Caroline is making some important discoveries of her own that goes against everything she was taught since she was a small child. And there is another aspect of this story that I don’t want to give away, but I am excited to get my hands on the next book to see what comes out of that.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift for a fair and honest review

This was an excellent book and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an excellent read. I looking forward to reading more of this author's work.

[Adam Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dumped boy meets fun girl in bar. They share a moment. Boy gets turned into a vampire, girl turns out to be a vampire hunter. Complications ensue....

So begin the adventures of Greg and Caroline, the protagonists of Lauryn April's new vampire novel Unearthed After Sunset . Writing a vampire novel is a bit like singing the blues. There are basically only 12 notes to the blues: add a thirteenth and you have something different. Similarly, vampires in vampire novels have to be, well, vampires. You can't mess with the basic trope because if you do, your vampire becomes... something else, and you no longer have a vampire novel. Writing a genuinely original vampire novel is next to impossible. It's the variations on the theme that keep you entertained.

With that in mind, Ms. April has succeeded in writing a pretty decent example of the genre. Her writing is crisp, flows smoothly, and the editing is well above average. In my view, Ms. April's writing is so good, she could have treated us to an extra 10,000 words of atmospherics rather than just rattling on with the narrative, which is not something every vampire author can pull off. Her characters (no matter how "bad") are sympathetic and believable, and their motivations make sense. As you get into the meat of this adventure-romance, the vampire-lore that drives this particular plot (and there is a plot: yay!) is compelling and well-thought out. It is a minor tragedy therefore, that all this good stuff is sandwiched between a beginning so derivative of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that I almost stopped reading, and a last paragraph so clunkily junior-high as to be almost insulting to the reader. Of course the protagonists will meet again: it's a romance series!

Kvetching aside, however, if you are a fan of the genre this book will not disappoint. I for one am looking forward to #2. Perhaps then we will find out why the series is named "Cereus!"

Many thanks to Ms. April for providing me with free review copy.

[Tiffany Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

**FTC DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED AN E-ARC FROM GOODREADS IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW. RECEIPT OF THIS BOOK IN THIS MANNER DOES NOT AFFECT MY OPINION OF THE BOOK OR THE CONTENT OF MY REVIEW.**

After Greg Erickson is killed by a vampire, Lila, he wakes up cold and alone in a casket. He claws his way out of the grave only to find himself in the middle of a vampire turf war, unsure of what’s going on or the reasons why they’re fighting. He’s also having a difficult time going from being a person to hunting them. While those in his new vampire pack are pushing him to accept his new life, there’s one girl from his old life that Greg can’t forget. Caroline Christensen once lived a perfectly normal life. But, after vampires killed her brother, the family legacy of vampire hunting was passed down to her. She meets Greg at a bar one night, they feel an instant connection. Then Greg discovers her secret and Caroline worries she’ll never hear from him again. She soon finds out that there’s a different reason he didn’t call and now Greg is one of her targets.

I’ll be honest, I love vampire books. And this one is no exception. Lauryn April did an excellent job at coming up with a new storyline. She had an amazing skill at writing characters. All of the vampires were interesting and funny. I enjoyed all their personalities and the way they fit in together. The author obviously put a lot of thought into the reason the vampires were fighting amongst each other, as well as various other points in the storyline. I’m absolutely looking forward to reading what comes next for Greg and Caroline.

[Katya de Becerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this freshly voiced vampire romp of a book.
Great for the fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Anne Rice!
Looking forward for the next installment in the series.

[Jess (jessreads1985) · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s going to happen with Caroline and Archer! I need book two!!

[Lucinda Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been looking forward to Lauryn April’s new series and the first of ‘The Cereus Vampire Chronicles’, was anything but a disappointment. In fact, I the writing is better than ever. There is increasing and impressive strength and flow to the style.

We first met the male lead, Greg Erikson, aged twenty-three and something of a drifter, in a bar where he has headed after a series of bathetic misfortunes: ‘

‘I’d failed the summer class I needed to graduate, lost my internship at Douglass and Smith Publishing, got fired from the terrible landscaping job I picked up to cover the bills, and to top it off, my girlfriend dumped me because I’d kept all of that a secret.’

I had to warm to this anti hero – he’s so believable, and sympathetic in his character defects – that drifting, his urge to belong –as he is in his strengths – his unsparing self honesty, his self deprecating humour, and his capacity for loyalty and courage.

Events move quickly. Greg meets a pretty girl, Caroline, and dismayed as he is over the break up with his former girlfriend, he is nevertheless drawn to her; t he takes her number, and suddenly finds himself kissing her.

Then he sets of to the friend with whom he plans to stay – taking a short cut, it still being light – through a cemetery.

Here he sees Caroline set on by a couple of men. As he runs to her aid, she stabs them with a stake and they turn to dust. She urges Greg to leave and to forget what he has seen.

Instead, he hides and spies on her from a crypt as she is joined by her father. More attackers appear, the fighting recommences, and Greg realises that incredibly, they are modern day vampires and their hunters.

But then he is set on himself – by the siren Lila.

He wakes up in his coffin, scrabbles his way out, and finds her waiting for her new recruit to the gang of vampires run by the merciless predator Santo. He leads his gang in a doubled edged power struggle against a rival group of vampires, known as the Nosferatu, whilst simultaneously waging war against the vampire hunters.

Meanwhile, Caroline continues with her day-to-day routine of savage fights with vampires.

Twenty-year-old Caroline is as appealing a female lead as Greg is a male lead. Though she might be a member of the hereditary Order of Iowa, sworn in because her older brother Michael was killed a year ago by vampires, she retains much of her old personality, the fun loving girl student with two inseparable best friends who loves to go out and who finds her parents’ protectiveness irksome. Her insouciant description of the governing body of the Order of Iona is typical:

‘The Committee that governed us was made up of wrinkly old hunters who didn't die on the job, and they spent their retirement years like nosy neighbors keeping tabs on the rest of us.’

Meanwhile, as part of Santo’s group, Greg – now renamed Archer for his prowess with a hunter’s bow and arrows –is soon happy to discard as much of his lingering humanity as he can. He never fitted in before, wherever he went. Now he has a life outside society’s rules, where he feels that instead of being a dead monster, he is all powerful, at the top of the food chain, invulnerable to anything but sunlight and Transylvannian Sage. Now he can live without remorse or regret, seeing humans much as most meat eating humans see farm animals.

His new life is one of daily brutality where he attacks people and lets them live, or attacks them as kills, without compunction. At the same time, Santo is eager to extend his power base, and his group have a hideous recruitment drive.

Greg is puzzled by this obsession of the group leader to stay in that particular part of Phoenix, constantly in conflict with the Nosferatau, when as vampires they can travel to and live anywhere in the world, but Santo has good reasons; it is rumoured that the vampire hunters may have access to a cure for sunlight being fatal for vampires…

…Or is this cure something else?

Brutalised as he is, Greg cannot entirely throw off his feelings of regret about Caroline, and what might have been. He was human when he met and kissed her; he is a dead and a monster when he starts his relationship with the enticing but merciless Lila. All that he has lost is bound up with those budding feelings for Caroline.

When they met as enemies, Greg cannot regard Caroline entirely as that natural enemy. This is true for Caroline too: for she has learnt something that makes her hope that all vampires are not evil ( Imustn't write a spoiler here).

There is a good deal of horror in this story, but it is never gratuitously violent. The hideous turf wars between the vampires is vividly depicted and the sheer plunge into darkness of Greg’s transformation to the monstrous Archer is unsparingly portrayed; still, there is a great deal of contrasting human (or part human) feeling, and there are wonderful touches of light relief.

I have always enjoyed the humour in Lauryn April’s books, and this one is no exception. For instance:

‘Rival vampire gang sounded like the name of a terrible punk rock band.’

‘I also didn’t understand why we were fighting so hard to stay here. It seemed there were probably better places we could be.’

‘He wasn’t the most pleasant company. Vera told me he threw a lamp at her.’

‘“You stay on the couch. If you so much as knock on my bedroom door, I’ll stake you.”
“Yes ma ‘am.”
Caroline rolled her eyes and walked to her bedroom.’

And here are some of my other favourite quotes; they vary from the stirring to the horrific, to the touching to the tragic:

‘Our blows fell into a rhythm after that. I’d swing, she’d duck. She’d kick, I’d block. Our movements felt whimsical, as if we’d created some kind of combat-waltz and I was intoxicated by our dance. Every hit left me feeling alive. Then Caroline landed a solid kick to my chest, and lifted her stake, readying to drive it through my chest. I stumbled back, and finally realized this wasn’t a dance.’

‘A slurping noise filled the air as Marcus released the blood bag.’

‘Fingers emerged like fat white worms slithering up through the dirt. His hands came next, grasping at the grass. Moments later his arms were free and soon his dirt-smeared face emerged.’

‘The girls are getting dinner ready.” (No sexism in this arrangement; something even worse!)

‘The amber glow caressed him like a lover’s embrace.’

‘A metal trash bin caught my eye. I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of it standing there, watching her. I knocked it over with such force that the can dented, the lid flew off, and garbage spilled out. She didn’t deserve this.’

‘“So, what? You’re like, a good vampire? I thought you said this wasn’t like TV?”
I stormed forward until I stood only inches from her. She leaned back in her chair, holding her breath. “I’m choosing to be different. If you don’t believe me, then kill me. That’s your job, hunter. But I’m hoping maybe you’re more than your label too.”’

“The thirst for blood. The excitement of violence. The thrill of taking what you want with no regard to the consequences. Being bad can be a lot of fun.”

‘I’d never spent this much time looking at a vampire before and my hair stood on end as I neared. I’d never been able to be this close without having to fight for my life. Really, there wasn’t anything different about him and yet somehow, he looked – wrong. I realized how incredibly still he was, like a living photograph. His chest didn’t rise or fall. He didn’t breathe. Of course, he’s not breathing, he’s a vampire. Things were different when he was awake. He was so animated then. Now he lay completely motionless. Ice ran through my veins and I jumped back a step. Archer didn’t just look motionless, he looked dead. Despite knowing he would wake, an eerie sensation overcame me with the realization that I stared at a corpse.;

‘”I’m not the good guy. I know that. I’ll never be the hero of the story, not even if I try. That’s just not the way things are, and that’s okay.”’

The pace is fast, the characters vivid, the moral approach never simplistic, the conflicted reluctant tenderness between Greg and Caroline sensitively and believably portrayed, and generally I am eager to read the next in the series.

[Claire Self · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I have given Unearthed After Sunset by Lauryn April five out of five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Holy smokes! An excellent read! I really enjoyed this book!
I'm not entirely sure where I should start with this review but I'm going to start by saying that I was utterly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book!
One of my favourite layouts of a book is when you get to read from two different perspectives, in this book you get to read from Greg (Archer)'s and Caroline's point of view. I find it all the more interesting when you get the full story from two perspectives. I loved April's descriptive and detailed writing style, she managed to bring this story to life and I could picture each scene so clear in my imagination, I absolutely adored the development to the story.
There were quite a lot of different characters that you meet in this book and I didn't feel overwhelmed once to try and start to remember who was who, I could automatically remember as April developed her characters to this story incredibly. I really enjoyed learning about the characters in this book, especially the two main characters Greg Erickson and Caroline Christensen. Also, I'm a complete sucker for the forbidden romance trope (no matter how much it frustrates me because, well.....it's forbidden, duh!) and this had the full forbidden romance package! The tension and connection I felt between the two main characters, Greg and Caroline, was at times too much for me to handle! I could feel myself rooting for them whenever I came across a scene between the two characters together.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of vampire, action stories. I really enjoyed this book (if you haven't already guessed) and can not wait to get my hands on the sequel!

[Reonie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unearthed After Sunset is definitively a vampire novel. I was expecting the typical angst filled romance, but instead this is a story about coming to terms with being a vampire. More psychological than you would expect, but not with much.

It is story of Greg who is struggling to coupe with his new vampire life and dealing with what is left of his humanity. They are also adjusting with being in the vampire hierarchy and the morality shift that comes with being an apex predator.

On the other side of the equation is a vampire hunter who questions her own morality. Rumours of a cure gets Caroline’s attention. Is it right to kill a monster when monsters can be cured?

The whole dynamic between Greg and Caroline is that off natural born enemies, but neither one really feels like killing the other due to personal attraction.

So we have a pretty good urban fantasy with a touch of romance and a dash of horror. The main characters are charming and the plot only hints at cliches before turning into different directions.

Most of the side characters did not really register with me. There were quite a few in the vampire pack that I could not keep track of. They turned out to be cannon fodder most of the time anyway. The same thing with the vampire hunters outside of Caroline’s immediate family. I cannot think of one of their names off the top of my head.

Bringing the focus back to the main characters. The conflict between Greg, Caroline and Santo was really well done and led to some decent fight scenes.

It’s so easy to get bored reading another vampire book, but Unearthed After Sunset does not suffer the uniformity so many others do. It had a fresh new perspective and left out most the lusty angst.

[Karen Voitik · Rating 5 out of 5]

>Book Review – Unearthed After Sunset
>This book is the 1st in the Cereus Vampire Chronicles and ends in a cliffhanger. Greg is a 20 something who has pretty much lost everything – his girlfriend, job and internship. At a bar, he is attracted to Caroline. She gives him her phone number, but before he can call her he is attacked and turned into a vampire. I liked how he tries to rationalize the killing he must do to survive. Thoughts of Caroline are the only thing tying him to his last thread of humanity. His gang of vampires quickly turns into a selfish bunch, killing and searching for a cure for vampirism.
>Caroline is from a family of vampire hunters. She secretly has to hunt and kill vampires each night. She lost her brother to a vampire and hates all vampires as a result. When Caroline and Greg meet up in a vampire battle, neither can kill the other. They both are slowly learning that the ideas they had about hunters and vampires are not 100% true. The story quickly turns to one of overcoming prejudice.
>I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from Romance Authors that Rock. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This book is appropriate for a young adult (16+) audience. I am giving this book 5 stars. There aren’t any graphic romantic scenes, but there are scenes of violence. The story ends with a lot of questions regarding Caroline and Greg (Archer) and Caroline’s brother. The hunter’s organization is keeping secrets as well, which makes it hard to decide if the organization is good or bad.

[Melanie S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming of age in the afterlife

Unearthed After Sunset is writer Lauryn April's unique perspective on "coming of age" as a vampire. Twenty-something Greg fails crucial college courses, loses his career-launching internship, his part-time paid job, and his girlfriend. He meets Caroline, and the spark of attraction and hope flares - only to find out she's some freaky vampire-killer paranormal warrior chick! Then he is killed, and turned, by wild vampire Lila. His only connection to his former humanity is beautiful Caroline - who believes him dead. And if he reveals his new existence to her, she'll kill him! Caroline meanwhile reluctantly shoulders the responsibility of vampire hunting, hampered by her own inexperience and frustrated by the lack of support from her parents, her hunter's guild superiors, and the odd new behaviors of the vampires in the area. Moral dilemmas, amoral behavior, convoluted plots, paranormal politics, and the constant threat of betrayal challenge both Caroline and Greg at every turn in this paranormal action/thriller touched by forbidden (clean) romance. The novel is well-written, highly detailed and very YA in tone and perspective. Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight will happily immerse themselves in the hopes, fears, and dilemmas of Greg and Caroline's world. My thanks to the author for an ARC of this book; my voluntary review is my own personal opinion.

[Theat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought at first it was going to be just another Twilight, honestly it kept that pace for a bit but then something changed and it turned out to be a really good story

See full review here
https://gszengarden.wixsite.com/mylit...