Title: Vampyre Kisses
Author ; Elizabeth J Kolodziej
Publisher: Elizabeth J. Kolodziej at Smashwords
www.vampyrekisses.com
I enjoyed this book and if you like stories about vampires, werewolves and witches you might too.
Vampyre Kisses is an enthralling story about a young woman named Faith, who seems content with her life, but deep down craves more excitement. Then a mysterious man named Trent enters her world and everything changes. Surprising to Faith, Trent is a green-eyed vampire from Ireland. She is even more amazed to find out that she is a witch, and the last of her kind.
Faith learns that she is destined to restore her witch line and becomes more powerful as she gains confidence and knowledge, but danger lurks everywhere — especially when unknown assailants steal the most important gems from the vampire master and werewolf royalty.
Now surrounded by a world filled with mystifying vampires and werewolves, can Faith gain enough power to help her friends and rescue the stolen gems?
Vampyre Kisses is a solid and interesting read and the blurb above explains the story very well. The plot moves along at a fine pace, gives us variety in the type of scenes and takes the reader smoothly from one scene to another. The main characters are likeable and their relationships and motivations are realistic and believable. I enjoyed watching Faith grow from someone who needed protection into someone who was capable of looking after herself. The affect this had on Trent and the adjustments he had to make in relation to her growing empowerment were very realistic and well handled.
I liked the touch of humour in the growing relationship between the werewolf and the vamp and in the paranormal characters reactions to Faith’s input into their discussions. I also enjoyed the details of the training. I found this the most interesting and well written part of the book. It was good to see a character having to work hard to gain her skills.
The story is not predictable, but neither is it surprising. The noteworthy aspects are the ‘mother from hell’ character, the nature of the witch’s training, and the fact that the vamps did actually sleep in coffins. I had a giggle at the reference to Trent refurbishing the padding for more comfort. He really is a lovely character. Morgan the vampire’s subjugate mother relationship with Faith also added an unusual and lovely touch.
There are some problems with the writing that lowered my rating, but surprisingly didn’t mar my enjoyment a great deal. Near the beginning, two scenes are repeated twice, each time from a different point of view. The repetition is completely unnecessary, it adds nothing to the story and detracts from it by slowing it down. After that, however, the book improved a great deal and I found myself keen to see what happened next.
The other problems are in misused words and basic copy editing mistakes. A couple of copyediting mistakes are forgivable, I know how easy it is for several readers to miss the same simple mistake eg leaving off the ing from thinking, but here I found a whole sentence repeated twice, which makes me wonder how many times the ms was checked before publication. More of a problem are the words that were constantly misused eg than was used instead of then, not just once or twice but as a regular thing. To each they’re own, is another example of this kind of misuse.
I give the book 3 stars.