When Blood Calls (The Shadow Keepers, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

May 24, 2010 Shawna rated it liked it

Shelves: pnr-vampires, badasses-hunks-in-leather, pnr-angeldemon-fae-magic-witch-misc, assassin-hitman, angsty-dark-heavy-lotsa-drama, hero-abused-scarred-tortured-angst, hero-addict-excon-lawtrouble-thief, hero-alpha‎, i-read-no-longer-own-sold-swapped, romantic-suspense

3 stars – Paranormal Romance

With author endorsements from Kresley Cole, Larissa Ione, Gena Showalter, and Lara Adrian and an interesting premise, I had high expectations for the first book in J.K. Beck’s new Shadow Keepers series, but unfortunately When Blood Calls, although somewhat steamy, was a bit disappointing and fell rather flat.

Prosecuting attorney Sara Constantine is promoted to a new position with a secret division under Homeland Security after winning her most recent, high-profile cas 3 stars – Paranormal Romance

With author endorsements from Kresley Cole, Larissa Ione, Gena Showalter, and Lara Adrian and an interesting premise, I had high expectations for the first book in J.K. Beck’s new Shadow Keepers series, but unfortunately When Blood Calls, although somewhat steamy, was a bit disappointing and fell rather flat.

Prosecuting attorney Sara Constantine is promoted to a new position with a secret division under Homeland Security after winning her most recent, high-profile case, and suddenly she finds herself in the middle of her worst nightmares when she discovers her new job involves persecuting supernatural creatures. Her first assignment is to prosecute powerful vampire Lucius Dragos for murder, and even worse, he’s the same sexy stranger she recently had a wildly passionate, soul shattering one night stand with. Well, that sucks...pun intended.

Now Sara has to determine if Lucius is really the cold blooded monster she’s being led to believe that he is, or if he’s really the complex, affectionate man revealed to her in their night of erotic ecstasy. Can she uncover Luke’s secrets in order to save him from the executioner’s stake?

The story had a lot of possibility, but it was really disjointed overall and a bit slow at times. There wasn’t much depth to the characters, the relationship between Sara and Luke wasn’t developed at all, and the romance was really weak. The reader is just expected to believe in their instant love/true soul mates because they had one blissful night together that’s only referenced here and there and not even revealed through flashback. I just didn’t feel the “love” between the H/H, and not having them interact, other than some brief defendant/prosecutor questioning, until around page 177 sure didn’t help in building a connection. And Sara’s complete, speedy turnaround from wanting to see Luke punished for his monstrous crimes to total adoration, acceptance of his killing ways, and willingness to become a vampire herself to spend eternity with him, with minimal development between them, felt rather forced and seemed a bit implausible.

So overall it’s not a bad read or a total waste of time, but there’s just nothing remarkable about it, except maybe the strikingly sexy cover. The premise of the story had a lot of potential, but with weakly crafted characters and artificial romance between a rather bland H/H, it just didn’t ever really come together or deliver like I’d hoped.

Will I continue with the series? At this point I’m honestly not sure because I never say never, but I’ll probably wait for reviews before buying the next book. The third book When Wicked Craves features Luke’s advocate and friend, Nicholas Montegue, who I found intriguing in this, so I’m tentatively hopeful that his story will be better.

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Jun 08, 2011 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: michelle-mcm-s-2012-reading-list, read-june-2012, jk-beck

I'd give this book 3.5-4 stars. It has a lot of promise to become a favourite series and there are some characters I'm looking forward to getting to know better.

I found this one to be a paranormal law & order :) ...more

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