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Pages: 58
Goes Well With: A steaming bowl of tomato soup (crackers optional)
In case you haven’t noticed, vampires are all the rage these days—in theaters, on TV, and on bookshelves. And, like many of you, I’ve nearly had my fill. But now, with Halloween just days away, it’s a perfectly acceptable time to read a bit of vampire fiction—especially a short, lunch-break read like Tamelia Tumlin’s Seducing the Night.
Rana Cartwright is worried about her son. He’s had a fever for much too long, and she’s afraid that she’s about to lose him. But when the High Priestess tells her what she’ll need to do to save Damien, she hesitates—if only for a second.
Rana never wants to see Alexandru Milkos again. Unfortunately, the only way to save her son is to kill his father, so she packs a stake and some holy water into her purse and heads to The Voodoo Den—the one place in the city where the living and the undead mingle. It’s not an unfamiliar place to Rana. As a Dhampir—half human, half vampire—she’s spent much of her life hunting the undead. But she still has feelings for the man who was once her fiancé—before he became a monster—and this is one vampire she’s not sure she can kill.
Set in the seedy bars and along the dark, eerie streets of New Orleans after dark, Seducing the Night is a chilling paranormal read. Tumlin brings the streets of The Big Easy to life—but not the carefree, music-filled Bourbon Street. Instead, hers is a city filled with voodoo rhythms and shadowed streets that conceal all sorts of evils. Even if you read it in the middle of the day, it’ll give you chills. In fact, the haunting atmosphere alone makes this short novel worth reading.
But Seducing the Night has even more to offer. The characters are understandably a bit cliché—but although character development is somewhat limited, due to the story’s length, you’ll still enjoy reading about them. Rana may be set in her ways, but she has every reason to want to distance herself from the man she once loved. After all, he’s a vampire—and she’s a bitter, vampire-hunting half-breed. But she’s also a loving mother, determined to do whatever it takes to help her son—and her determination is admirable. Alexandru, meanwhile, is strong and thoughtful. He struggles with who he is, but despite Rana’s anger, he can’t help but love her. But while he wants to protect her, he isn’t the same old romance novel alpha male—and that makes him more likeable than the average hunky hero.
In a short amount of time, Tumlin manages to set the stage and draw her readers in to her characters and their story. She even throws in a twist or two to keep things interesting. Though it has its limitations—and its flaws—Seducing the Night is a deliciously dark and eerie read. It’s just the thing for a Halloween lunch break.
