Belladonna knew her life was about to get even worse the day she had to throw Rosie off the Hollywood sign.
What she sought was Golden Age glamor, fame, flashbulbs, and the man who played Dracula.
What she got was Hollywood's underbelly – drugs, degenerates, phoneys, and a vampire with one hell of an attitude.
Blood, Revenge, Gangsters, Vampires, Bela Lugosi & Guns.
My review:
This was an interesting book to try and review for a variety of reasons, namely that my opinion changed almost as often as the page numbers did. Seriously, I went back and forth over and over, enjoying Belladonna's antics then becoming annoyed by her immaturity, but in the end I'm rating this book a decent 3 star effort with the explanation that would gladly read another book by this author.
Belladonna is a contradiction but I really think that is the reason I kept reading. I just had to know what the full circle of her changing nature would bring and if her obsession with Bela Lugosi would ever end. I just didn't connect with that aspect of her personality and I was much more interested in Vivant. He reminded me of Lestat, so self involved and spoiled, yet utterly charming and irresistible.
"It's alright. You just died, that's all."
Belladonna laughed hysterically.
"I just died-that's all?"
Vivant rolled his eyes, as if dying and still being able to walk and talk were commonplace.
He has such a casual view of human life and it was amusing to witness his interactions with Belladonna because of it. I mean, he just snatched her off the streets, changed her life for eternity, and he expects her to be loving and grateful from minute one? They have some pretty fun fight scenes that involved cursing and guns...but you'll have to read the book to get the details.
Another aspect that I found interesting was the vampire lore, which to me seemed to combine vampire and ghoul. Very unusual and a little ironic. These are not Bela Lugosi's Dracula-esque vampires at all. Loved the noir styling of this story and all the old Hollywood references really added depth and richness to the characters and the setting.
Want to know more about Alex Severin and her books?
Visit Alex Severin at her website here. Blog here.
*Reviewed by Anna Dougherty
*This book was given to me for review purposes by the author.
1 comment:
This sounds very intriguing. I love old Hollywood ;)
I read a vamp book where the lore was a mix of ghoul and vamp. I remembering having a hard time with it for that reason. Now I'm going to have to go look that one up again. LOL.
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