The Bite Before Christmas with Lynsay Sands and Jeaniene Frost
Paranormal Romance
October 25, 2011
Hardcover

Bite Before Christmas features The Gift by Lynsay Sands set in her Argeneau world and Home For the Holidays by Jeaniene Frost, a Night Huntress story.

The Gift by Lynsay Sands

Two days before Christmas, Teddy Brunswick finds himself in a cottage, away from his home town of Port Henry where he is a police chief because he has no family to spend the holidays with. But it has snowed a lot and his cabin has lost power. He also doesn’t have much food stocked up, but after looking at the snow covered roads, he is not sure when he will be able to make it to a store. Luckily, he meets the person staying at the neighboring cabin, Katricia Argeneau. Katricia has food, but no heat. Since Teddy has a fireplace in his cabin, they decide, Katricia will bring food over to his place, and they can stay warm by the fire.

What Teddy doesn’t realize is that Katricia is a vampire, who has just realized much to her surprise she has found her life mate.

I was very disappointed in The Gift. I will say, this is the first I’ve read of Lynsay Sands so I am not familiar with her Argeneau world. But this one reads very well as a stand alone. I understand the world, or at least the small glimpse we see in this book. Basically this book is Katricia meets Teddy and realizes she can’t read his mind, which is a big signal that he might be her life mate. Teddy knows the existence of vampires, so her coming clean with who she is is not a big shock to him. I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. Something, anything! But these two just hang out in the cabin. To me, they don’t have a spark of attraction between them at all. Their chemistry totally falls flat. It is very much a case of telling us, rather than showing us:

The woman was just…Well, she was sassy as hell, smart as a whip, and had a killer sense of humor. He’d laughed more today during their snowball fight, card games, and talks than he’d laughed with any woman ever.

Really? Because we never see this fun, crazy side to these two characters.

And then when the big moment comes where Katricia admits to Teddy he is her life mate, it is very anti-climatic. All in all, a disappointing read.

Rating: D

Home for the Holidays by Jeaniene Frost

It’s Bones’s birthday, and to surprise him, Cat has invited their close friends and family to their home for a party and to stick around for the holidays. Cat wants to have an old-fashioned Christmas. But trouble never stays away long from these two. As Bones opens his presents, they realize Annette, who has flown in from London is not present at the party. Ian offers to go back to the hotel to see what is holding her up, and what he finds isn’t good. There is blood all over the hotel room, and Annette is all out of sorts – definitely acting strange. She also refuses to give up the name of the person that hurt her. Frustrated, they take her back to their home, where they have another surprise. But I’m not going to tell you who or what because that will ruin the surprise for you!

I enjoyed this short story – we meet a new character, like I just said, I’m not going to tell you who, but this person holds many secrets about Bones. And, as a result, we learn a lot about Bones’s past. I was actually surprised by the depth of what we learn, especially something at the end of this story.

In true Night Huntress fashion, there is a big conflict with lots of violence, one liners from Cat, and the very sexy (and I admit sleazy) Ian has lots of page time. And to pique your curiosity even more, at one point Ian says this to Cat:

“That’s right, you nasty little vixen, bite me harder.” Ian urged.

Oh yes – there are some crazy things that happen in this book – but it all works out in the end. Fans of this series are going to want to read this one for some details we learn about Bones.

Rating: B

Overall Rating: C

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