Crimson Debt by Evangeline Anderson
Paranormal Erotic Romance
March 4, 2013
Self Published
Reviewed by May
“My best friend might be a vampire, but that doesn’t mean I want anything to do with the rest of you.”
Addison discovered that she was immune to vampires enthrallment the night that she watched a room full of people go under a vampire’s spell. The night that a vampire became obsessed with her best friend and roommate, and her life was changed forever. Her roommate was turned, and the vampire who was so obsessed with her friend’s beauty now takes delight in torturing her. Addison lets her friend feed from her (since she’s unable to feed otherwise, being a very lousy vampire and all) and she spends her nights working as an auditor. A job that requires being immune to enthrallment and has her seeing the worst of vampire and human relationships.
Determined to bring down all vampires and save humans from their tricks and murderous ways, Addison never expected to feel attraction to one. Though there is one vampire who has a great reputation, squeaky clean record, and whom she has to fight an attraction to each time she sees him. Corbin is over 400 years old and owns one of the clubs that she regularly inspects. He has made clear that he would be very interested in pursuing more of a relationship with Addison, and is delighted when circumstances have her calling on him.
I will start by telling you what I liked about this book. I really liked the set-up because I’m a total sucker for romances where a character strongly dislikes the other person and over time and events an attraction grows and true love blossoms. I also really liked the author’s writing style, she kept the story flowing right along and painted a clear picture at the same time. I was able to visualize the scenes easily, and yet didn’t feel bogged down by detail.
I’m sorry to say those are the only kind words about this book that I have. While it had great potential, the execution simply did not work and the story was riddled with problems. The big problem is that almost all of the drama would be removed from this story, if the heroine wasn’t such a complete dumbass. She throws herself through the TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine barrier and was truly an embarrassment of a character. It was really disappointing because if she had been smart, capable, and even the tiniest bit logical we could have had a really interesting story instead of constantly dealing with the fallout from her idiotic escapades.
Her job is to monitor vampire/human relations at vampire owned businesses, and I assume she received training and has observed and learned a lot about vampires since starting this job about six years ago that only a select few can even consider doing. If this is so, why is she so completely ignorant about their ways, about the fact that they aren’t all like the monster that turned her friend?
What got me into this story was the fact that she considered them all monsters and yet indebted herself to the male vampire who is so obsessed with her because she is desperate to help her friend. Her friend who is “one of them” and yet she still likes. Doesn’t this in and of itself tell us that maybe not all vampires are going to be bad? Setting aside her extreme prejudice against the vampires, our heroine enters into an agreement with the one who is strong enough to help her friend escape. The heroine of this book gets a huge, monumental, absolutely astronomical favor from the hero and in return causes an incident of epic proportions by ignoring all his rules, advice, and demands for the exchange.
“I claimed you as my consort and then you offered to feed another vampire. You made this offer right in front of me as well as the Area Inquisitor and one of my inferiors.”
“Taylor’s hurt- she needs blood.” I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. “Look, I’m sorry but I wasn’t thinking about your precious ego – I was thinking about my friend’s wellbeing.”
Yes, let’s not think ahead or wait until we are outside, right? Corbin continues…
“What you have done is tantamount to offering to commit adultery in front of high-ranking witnesses. In Roderick’s mind, I now wear the cuckold’s horns.”
“The what?” I asked but Corbin only shook his head and continued.
“Roderick will draw one of two conclusions. Either he will think that I am weak and unable to control my own consort or he will deduce that I was lying and claiming you falsely as my own. Either conclusion puts us in a very, very bad situation.” His voice was so quiet I could barely hear it yet so filled with menace it made me shiver.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“You must have had at least some idea. I told you when I was healing your scars.”
Vampires are all about blood, so to me it would go without saying (though he did indeed tell her explicitly!) that it is important. Furthermore, he was very clear about how she had to behave and she ignored all common sense. Yes, let’s antagonize the ancient powerful vampire instead of shutting up for five minutes.
She is not at all grateful, does not ever stop and really think about how he did not have to do anything for her and yet he has. He has done something incredibly kind for her, insanely generous, and all he asks is that in return she pay attention and behave so that the other vampires believe he has managed to enthrall her. This will show how powerful he is, and fix her problem. Truly a simple win-win.
How does our hero respond? Through pain and embarrassment.
“This is for speaking out of turn when you should hae been silent,” he growled, spanking me again. Smack!
My ass was burning by now and there was nothing erotic about it.
He loves her, yet must humiliate her to punish her. She is attracted to him, yet must fight against it and act like she has no brain in her mind. It is an ugly relationship dynamic, and truly it un-did any enjoyment I might have had with this author’s writing. The actions kept snowballing into bigger problems, messes, and situations that our hero has to fix because the heroine is just too much of a loud mouthed idiot to know better.
Which begs the question: why does he want her again?
I’m really not sure, but the bottom line is this book didn’t work. I could spend time going down “if only” lane, but I can’t re-write this book. If the heroine had simply been written as a smart and capable woman, this might have been an extraordinary story with much more interesting details and twists. As it stands, her actions are what drive the plot and drama in the book, which makes it a story I can’t in any way recommend.
Grade: D
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