Violent Desire (Blackrose Brotherhood #1) by Ariana Nash

There are so many elements of this story that I adore. A troubled detective with past trauma. Check. A sexy supernatural who can’t leave said detective alone. Check. Morally grey main characters. Check. Sexual tension and a bad guy with an unhealthy obsession with one of the MCs. Oh yes please and thank you.

Synopsis: Eric Sharpe, detective at the NYPD, takes the law into his own hands when his partner’s murderer can’t be brought to justice. And in doing so, he inadvertently puts himself in the middle of a vampire show-down.

Zaine is a member of the Blackrose brotherhood, and a vampire. His job is to track and kill out-of-control nyktelios vampires and he’s not suppose to care about a nyktelios’ victims. And he’s absolutely not supposed to let his target get away because he was to busy saving a sexy detective.

A human and a vampire can never truly be together. But Eric’s and Zaine’s worlds get entangled even more when it turns out that the nightmare from Eric’s past is the very vampire that Zaine’s been hunting. A vampire who now has Eric in his sights once again.

I enjoyed this read a whole lot. It’s fast-paced and eventful, with all sorts of mysteries being uncovered as you go along. It’s the details of Eric’s past. Zaine’s secrets. The Brotherhood itself. Basically, there’s not a dull moment. I breezed through this read in record time since I couldn’t put it down.

This is the first book in a new series, so there’s obviously some world-building to get through. There was a new take on the aspect of the vampires and blood-sucking in particular that I thought refreshing. That, along with a few other things made this new universe feel very new and interesting. And I wish there had been more. The story was over too quickly, without providing all the answers I needed. Which – of course – was the point all along, since I’m now dying to read the next book.

For a long while I thought this would be a five-star read. I loved the world. I loved Eric. And him and Zaine were awesome together. But, unfortunately, Nash decided that the epic fight in the end and the Brotherhood’s opposition to Eric and Zaine being together wasn’t enough. So she added the classic self-sabotage-out-of-nowhere twist just to wring out that last bit of drama from the story. It’s really sad because it was completely unnecessary, and it lowered my overall opinion of the story.

Still, this book is quite the ride. And I’m predicting this series, with a whole bunch of vampires each getting their story, will be epic.

This first installment, though, ends up a solid 4-star. Highly recommend.

* A free e-copy of this book was kindly provided by Gay Romance Reviews *