#33 When Darkness Comes by Alexandra Ivy

My Rating: 5 out of 10 stars

Abby Barlow has unknowingly become The Chalice, a host body for The Phoenix, the Goddess designed to keep the Prince of Darkness and his minions at bay. Dante is a 341 year old vampire who's been bound by ritual to protect The Chalice from all the demons and minions now hunting her. With the death of the current Chalice, and it's transference into Abby, they're now running for their lives from the demons that hunt the Chalice, in the hopes of bringing the Prince of Darkness back into our realm.

This book struck me from the beginning because the main character's last name is very similar to mine, and then on the very first page of the Prologue, the Duke of Granville is mentioned, and Granville is my Dad's middle name, taken from what was once part of his last name before he moved to America from England as a teen. In any case, it just struck me as quite coincidental. :-)

This is Alexandra Ivy's first novel and though the story itself was fairly decent, it did have a bit too much romance for my liking. Also, I thought her style left something to be desired. She was constantly using incomplete sentences as entire paragraphs! I know authors often do this for emphasis sometimes, but I thought it was very much overused, such that as a reader, you couldn't stop mid-way through a chapter because you might stop at a paragraph that makes no sense standing alone. I didn't like that... but I often see a lot of quirky things I don't like in an author's first novel anyway.

The story itself was supposed to contain an element of danger, and it tried to, but for some reason, it just didn't come across that way, probably because Abby and Dante were stopping to have sex every 1/2 hour. We hear at least once per chapter about his silver eyes, and long dark hair, and gorgeous body, etc. It's this kind of thing that made it too romance-y for me, and caused my attention to wander. Once I got beyond all these things though, I did enjoy the underlying story. If I hadn't, I would've given up without finishing. So I'm guessing romance readers might appreciate some of it more than I did.

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