Review: Bittersweet Blood by Nina Croft

My Thoughts:

In most fairy tales, terms like demon and fae have automatic associations with them. Fae=good and demon=bad.

But what if those are just names for otherworldly races who have different agendas from our own, and what humans think of them doesn’t enter into it at all?

Tara Collins has been hidden all her life behind a hedge of rules laid down by her aunt. Don’t leave our property, don’t drink alcohol, don’t take off your talisman, and most especially, don’t tell anyone the truth about yourself.

But when her aunt dies, Tara discovers that her aunt never told her the truth about herself. And Tara feels that she needs to know. She also feels like she is entitled to a normal life. At 22, she craves a life that includes other people and real experiences.

So she leaves her remote Yorkshire village and gets an apartment in London. She enrolls in university. She makes some close friends.

She hires a private investigator to dig into her origins. And that’s where all the fun begins.

Because for the investigator to have something to work with, she has to tell him the whole story, as she knows it. Breaking her aunt’s most important rule.

Tara chose Christian Roth’s investigations firm because her cat picked his name. Yes, you read that right. Tara took her cat’s paw scratchings as a sign. But then, Tara’s cat Smokey is not exactly what he seems, although Tara doesn’t know it. All Tara knows is that Smokey is her oldest and dearest friend.

On that infamous other hand, Christian Roth is a lot more than just a private investigator. Christian Roth is a vampire, and has been for over 500 years. It turns out that he is the perfect person to investigate her past.

Because Tara isn’t human. Neither are the beings her mother tried to protect her from.

And they’re back.

Verdict: Tara is a very sympathetic character. She’s grown up under unusual circumstances, and she just wants a normal life. It’s too bad that there’s no way she could possibly get one!

But it makes sense that she resists the idea that she’s not human as long as she does. It’s not a truth that anyone in her circumstance would want to hear.

Christian is a predator in business clothing, and he drops the businessman mask quickly. He’s been waiting for a purpose, and Tara gives him something to fight for.

The really cool part of the story is the war between the fae and the demons, and how it manifests on Earth. They’ve been trying to beat each other for centuries, if not more, and so much of what happens in the story turns out to be collateral damage. This was awesome. Also awesomely painful for Tara and Christian.

This paranormal version of the world, where the vampires and some of the other races that we are familiar with, like werewolves, are part of an organization called “The Order” that is policing Earth to enforce a treaty between the fae and the demons, is a place where there are lots of fascinating story possibilities.

I want more! I also have a not-so-secret desire for this world to connect to Croft’s SFR series, Blood Hunter. Vampires and werewolves in space!