Dare to Love Forever (New Vampire Justice, Book 1) by Jake C. Wallace

[Ulysses]

Dare to Love Forever (New Vampire Justice, Book 1)
Jake C. Wallace
Dreamspinner Press, 2016
Cover by Reese Dante
ISBN: 9781634777162
3.5 stars

“Dare to Love Forever” offers us a very different take on vampires. Aside from needing blood – and being forbidden to take human blood except in designated “bite clubs”- vampires are pretty much like everyone else. But because they’re different, they suffer from discrimination and second class citizenship.

Sound familiar?

But Jake Wallace takes off from this premise and presents us with two unusual kinds of vampires, both of them very rare, and both of them about to become very involved in each other’s destinies. Carson Locke is a 21-year-old tabula rasa vampire. Drinking from a human will wipe their mind, eliminating all personality and sense of self. For this reason, Carson has been kept isolated from the world all of his life.

Commander Lincoln Samuels of New Vampire Justice is a sanatore vampire, which is also rare, but not deadly. His blood heals. When Carson’s family is murdered and Carson finds himself on the verge of starvation, the New Vampire Justice force gets involved. Samuels realizes that his attraction to Carson goes beyond Carson’s youth and looks, but also knows that when two such rare vampires connect, things could get messy.

And indeed they do.

My biggest personal amusement with this book comes from the fact that Wallace has chosen to set all the action in central upstate New York – where I grew up. I mean, who sets an elite Vampire police force in Utica? Who ever mentions Cazenovia (where my family lived for decades) in any book? I have to admire Wallace for casting a spotlight on the places of my childhood and youth. Not all the action in the world takes place in NY and LA.

On the other hand, my major gripe about this genuinely exciting, page-turning story, is the ham-fisted bodice-ripping treatment of much of the relationship between Lincoln and Carson. Too much repetition of very purple prose and (sorry, it’s just me) too much sex. I got the connection between the men; I totally embrace the erotic intensity of pair-bonding between vampires. But a little restraint would have made the book less like the overwrought angst I remember from middle school (in Syracuse).

Jake Wallace clearly had fun writing this book, and no doubt will have fun with the second volume. So we can all have just as much fun reading them.