| Author: | Katee Robert |
| Genre(s): | ➡️ Romance ➡️ Erotica ➡️ Vampires ➡️ Polyamory |
| Series? | ❎ No |
| Goodreads Rating: | ⭐ 3.44 (28k+ ratings; 4k+ reviews) |
| Personal Rating: | ⭐ 3.5 / 5 Overall 🌶️ 5 / 5 spice |
🛑 Spoiler Warning 🛑
I’ll be recounting events, characters, and themes so IT WILL BE FULL OF SPOILERS.
If you’d like to read a spoiler-free book review, kindly head to my Goodreads post. You don’t need an account to read it. 🙂
Description (Spoiler-Free)
In a fantasy world full of different creatures, we have Mina. She’s a dhampir (half-vampire) who just arrived at the steps of a powerful vampire, Malachi. Mina’s father sending her off to essentially become Malachi’s slave is just an item in the long list of abuse she suffered under her father’s control, and she intends to break out no matter what it takes. As soon as Malachi lets her in, he immediately consumes her blood and her sexuality. As they spend time together, she soon learns that Malachi is also in his own unique prison architected by her father. He can’t leave the house but his two closest companions who are also powerful vampires, Wolf and Rylan, can come and go.
As they get to know each other and their circumstances, we learn that Mina’s arrival at Malachi’s doorstep comes with a sinister agenda from her father. However, with the help of Wolf and Rylan, it looks like this political move might just backfire once they uncover Mina’s identity. She might just be the key to their freedom.
Characters
- Mina
- She’s a dhampir sent by her father to become, mainly, Malachi’s food source. I personally like her resolve to get away from her father’s control. While other damsel-in-distress kind of characters tend to become super soft in the beginning to accentuate the emotional abuse they received from their controlling parents, she was not. Her past and reactions made it reasonable for me to accept that she’d be open to a polyamorous relationship. She doesn’t have a good role model and she suddenly felt different levels and types of attraction and love in this house – something she never had.
- All her life she thought she was a half-vampire and half-human. Later on, she discovers that she’s actually half-vampire and half-seraph. Her seraphim counterpart makes her ‘bind’ with people she has sexual intercourse with. Those bounded to her will feel the constant urge to be near her and be at her beck and call.
- Malachi
- A powerful vampire who was imprisoned in his house by Malachi’s father using a magical blood ward for political gains. He, Wolf, and Rylan have been friends for (hinted) hundreds of years. They also have sexual relationships with each other, and it seems like Malachi is the center and in charge of this existing relationship.
- Rylan
- Another powerful vampire but way older than Malachi and Wolf. He is the knowledge expert of the group and ends up making everyone realize that Mina is actually half-seraphim.
- He’s also the ‘angsty’ one in the dynamics, not liking Mina’s presence in the house at all. Because of this, he’s the one with the ‘love-hate’ type of sexual scenes.
- Wolf
- The third powerful vampire in the male vampire threesome before Mina entered the picture. He’s your typical ‘bad boy’ archetype who uses teasing as the foreplay of most of his sexual encounters with the group.
- He came from a family with powers to control / feel blood. Hence, one of his cousins was the one who helped Mina’s father imprison Malachi.
- He’s also the one who has connections to Azazel, a demon they would later on try to bargain with to release them all free.
- Cornelius
- Mina’s father who currently reigns their land after subduing the other powerful vampires. He also intended for Mina to get impregnated by Malachi so he can have an heir.
- Grace
- A human, vampire hunter who would end up helping Mina rescuing Malachi, Ryan, and Wolf after they were caught by Cornelius.
- Azazel
- A demon who makes deals by giving the one who summons him what they want in exchange of the summoner’s life for a ‘fixed’ term. He auctions these souls for servitude to other demons. Unfortunately, time moves different in hell so the ‘fixed term’ cannot be exactly known.
- Lizzie
- Wolf’s sister who helped them storm Cornelius’s castle.
🌶️ Spice (5/5)
As this is one of my first smut/spicy reads, I definitely grade this 5 out of 5 in terms of spice. I have never experience spicy scenes to be so frequent in a book! Also, usually in YA the spicy scenes are already too hot for me to read in public; I never realized how vanilla they were compared to the erotica genre! Definitely an eye-opening experience.
🌟 Review (3.5/5)
This is a spice read through and through. I’m thoroughly impressed how many variations of sexual encounters an author can squeeze into one body of work, to be honest. Once I discovered that there’ll be a spicy scene every few chapters I stretched this read for days. I’d say that was a good call considering there were some reviews saying some spicy scenes got too boring for them.
Story-wise, it got me hooked! Mina’s identity as a half-seraph really intrigued me. What CAN seraphim do? What impact can their powers have in a fantasy world? The fact that the plot relied heavily on this premise made it a good read for me. Honestly, I’d love to read a version with less smut content (or not) and more depth on the lore. There’s so much to discover about the seraphs since they’re rare and secretive.
Character depth? Good enough, but I’d lean on saying they’re half-baked. There’s enough of them to get you curious and their personalities are surely distinguishable. I got curious about Azazel’s character and world as a demon who facilitates trade. He mentioned auctions; why is that a thing for demons? Can’t they get their own servants? Why is Azazel allowed to go back and forth between hell and earth? How DOES he know when the servitude time is up? Another one: Wolf seems to have a rich story too! He can summon Azazel, he knows blood magic, he has a complicated family relationship, and he seems to have history with a human hunter. I’m so curious!
So yeah, this book just became a guilty pleasure, emphasis on pleasure. Jump into these types of books for the steamy scenes and you’ll enjoy it. I would’ve loved for a deeper lore (there were lots of deep, not much lore), character and world-building; but we’re not reading this for that, aren’t we? I’m here to learn, people! 🤣
The Stray Reader 
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