When the biographies of his relatives are mistaken for romances, vampire Lucern finds his life thrown into entertaining chaos as the newest editor of Romance at Roundhouse Publishing makes it her mission to transform him into a bestselling author, and steals his immortal heart in the process.

2007-03-02 Fun & romantic

There was recently a bit of a debate on The Book Club Forum on the subject of the entire Romance Genre and how there's a general perception that they're all Mills and Boon-type bodice-rippers, full of heaving bosoms and quivering members, which can be rather off-putting to modern women who feel they want more Sex and the City than Romp in the Hay. There's also a bit of a boom in supernatural chick-lit, and vampire chick-lit in particular seems to be peaking recently, so it was only a matter of time before a slew of vampire-romances came to the fore.

Surprisingly, SWV is a lot of fun and, as a romance, it certainly has bite (please, forgive the punning - it's utterly unavoidable in such cases!). Sands has a great sense of humour that shines through, but adds enough no-nonsense titillation to keep the most ardent romantic happy. It also explores the very real possibility of having to give up absolutely everything (i.e. your family, your job, etc) in order to gain things such as love and almost-eternal life - there's a real dilemma there that we're often not really expected to broach in many other vampire love stories and it makes a nice change to have this injection of realism in out-and-out fantasy.

Seeing as this is actually the first in a series, I may even be tempted to give the others a bit of a nibble...