Blood Truth by J. R. Ward

Blood Truth is the fourth and latest book in the Black Dagger Legacy series. It’s vampire romance with very little focus on blood-sucking. And I looove this book universe. I love both the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and the Legacy one. I’m hooked om Ward’s vampire world and I think anyone reading Blood Truth is too. Because this just isn’t a stand-alone. Either you’re a committed Ward vampire-fan and have read them all, or you haven’t read any of them. There’s no in between.

Blood Truth is the book about Boone, a soldier in the Black Dagger Brotherhood ‘s training program, and Helania who’s trying to find her sister’s killer. The two cross paths when another young woman is killed, in the exact same place where Helania’s sister was murdered. The Brotherhood investigates the murder, but Boone has a hard time staying impartial. Helania is a witness but the instant attraction and connection he feels for her isn’t something he can ignore.

Now. This isn’t a thriller. It’s romance with a murder plot. And the continuation of the awesome twists and turns of Ward’s vampire community in Caldwell. As all of the books in the Black Dagger series it focuses on one couple and weave their story into the stories of all the characters from previous books. Unfortunately, Blood Truth is not one of Ward’s best stories. It’s actually way down on the bottom.

For starters, I had real trouble getting into the story. And I consider myself a hard-core fan. Half-way through the plot picked up though, and after that I couldn’t put it down. But that was due to the murder plot and not because I was particularly engaged in Boone’s and Helania’s shenanigans. In fact, I was almost entirely indifferent to what they were up to. Romantically or otherwise. What kept me reading were the other characters, the original Black Dagger Brotherhood crew. Because really, neither Boone nor Helania had any kind of personality. Those two characters couldn’t have been more meh. And that’s despite Boone torturing a rapist and chopping off his dangly bits.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s lacking in Blood Truth, but this book just feels like it was written on some kind of auto-pilot. And when combining all these things; a new romance, introducing new characters, murder-solving and also adding tidbits about the original crew, none of those things gets done with the care or depth they deserve. It’s obvious that character development wasn’t a priority and even the glimpses of the much loved original Black Dagger gang was perfunctory. They were predictable in a way suggesting each of them is very much the sum of just a few fixed traits and not the three-dimensional characters they once appeared to be.

So I’m disappointed. But I’m also a total sucker for this series and one dud won’t prevent me from reading the future installments.