Lucy Corentine was a highborn vampire private investigator living in and working from her grandmother’s old Manor. Her phone rang, but it was William asking her if she was coming home and if she would marry him. He had proposed a year late to her, so she was not going to marry him… yet. He was everything she wanted in a husband, but he had to realize the seriousness of his mistake and waiting 100 years was a proper price to pay. However, he would call again next week. He always did.
An email came in from Derek who had another of his weapon inventions for her to test. A previous one was a portable guillotine which had almost sliced her head off when it misfired. As with all of his inventions, she hid it in the basement and hoped that one of the other testers would tell him how awful it was.
The phone rang again and, after a short silence, a man gave her a riddle to solve and hung up. Heading back to the kitchen, she had to instead check on who was knocking on her door. All she saw was a cardboard box on the porch. If this was another odd gift from William, it was going up in the attic with the rest of his goofy gifts – unless it was a bomb or severed head, of course. But when the box meowed, she was too curious and opened it up. A blind black cat leaped out and ran into the house! Her biggest mystery now was: is the cat a boy or girl? Naming it Jester, she decided to take it to the vet in a giant handbag William had given her. (I hoped the chapter would not describe what I knew would happen when she tried to get the cat into the bag!)
Derek came by with a new gadget to test, and the two of them teased and flirted with each other. Derek liked her new cat, Jester. When Lucy went off to bed, the gadget woke her up. She went to silence it, but she returned and found a man in her bedroom named Jonas who said he was sent by William. She kept trying to throw him out, asking him to come back in the morning, knock on the door, and ask for whatever he thought she could help him with. He said he couldn’t, but could get her some B+ blood which perked her interest as she sent him downstairs to wait for her. When he told her he needed to find an item, and she asked what kind, he answered “A lost item”. No, this interview wasn’t going well at all. Asking for more specifics, he said it was a watch; and what did it look like? “… a watch!” She continued grinding her teeth and decided to refer him to someone she hated the most. After asking for a description, he took out his phone and showed her a picture! He couldn’t have started with that?? So asking if he knew where he had it last, she already expected his answer: “No.”
The hunt for the watch was not moving along very well. With the riddle, the appearance of a blind cat, and all the other strange pieces of her life not investigated, what momentous event was coming her way? Did she have a clue? And why was William giving her permission to date? And what is she supposed to do with a blood slave? There has to be a mystery in here somewhere, right?
This was a crazy, funny, enjoyable start to the series. I enjoy the snarky character of Lucy, her interactions with the other characters in her life, her anger management issues, and the humor woven throughout the book. The story line is well-paced as the reader is led along in the mysteries she brushes against and generally ignores. But something is building up, and you need to grab your copy of the book to find out what’s going on! Be ready for the cliffhanger – you know this is the first book. If it ended here, who would read the next one? So catch up with the fun and be ready for Book 2!