A Hunger like No Other, by Kresley Cole

Title: A Hunger like No Other

Author: Kresley Cole

Target Audience: Adult

Pages: 356

Rating: 7/10

Genre: Romance

Person: Third

Tense: Past

Blurb (quoted):

“A mythic warrior who’ll stop at nothing to possess her…

Lachlain MacRieve, leader of the Lykae Clan, is enraged to find the predestined mate he’s waited millennia for is a vampire. Or partly one. This Emmaline is small, ethereal half Valkyrie / half Vampire, who somehow begins to soothe the fury burning within him.

A vampire captured by her wildest fantasy…

Sheltered Emmaline Troy finally sets out to uncover the truth about her deceased parents – until a powerful Lykae claims her as his mate and forces her back to his ancestral Scottish castle. There, her fear of the Lykae – and their notorious dark desires – ebbs as he begins a slow, wicked seduction to sate her own dark cravings.

An all-consuming desire…

Yet when an ancient evil from her past resurfaces, will their desire deepen into a love that can bring a proud warrior to his knees and turn a gentle beauty into the fighter she was born to be?”

Summary:

Emmaline Troy, half Valkyrie, half Vampire, has only just left the nest to search for information on her ever-missing parents when she is suddenly taken hostage by a savage man that terrifies her. When forced to help him return home, Emma doesn’t realise that going with him means changing her life forever – and along the way discovering new things, not only about herself, but about the parents she never knew.

Lachlain MacRieve has been trapped and tortured for longer than he can track, doomed to burn alive repeatedly thanks to his immortality. But when he senses the presence of his mate, the soul he’s been waiting for all his life, it gives him the strength to escape – only to find, to his horror, that she is a vampire, the same species that had tortured him.

But with both of them keeping secrets and a dangerous opponent hunting for Emma, can they possibly survive the trip to the safety of Lachlain’s home? More troubling, can they survive each other and the roiling turmoil inside them both?

Judgement:

First of all, I have to say I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this book – I’d never heard of the author before or anything, and I was in a rush, so after the library computer search turned out this books name, I swiped it up and left… Only to discover later the amount of detail in the sex. With nothing to compare it too, I’m not really sure if this one counts as erotica, but honestly I’m seeing a trend – anything in the adult section that involves vampires always seems to have a bunch of sex involved… So I warn you now, this is for a MATURE audience.

Now, other than that surprise, this was a highly enjoyable novel – I liked the storyline, it was very original so far as I’ve read, and the characters have specific personalities that develop and change as the story progresses – though, I think perhaps a few of them change too much, especially the main character who could well be a new character entirely by the end; I’m not sure if I like that about it or not. And honestly, I think the rhetorical question in the blurb is cheesy, typical, and easily guessed, which almost made me not bother reading it, but once I started the novel was compelling enough to keep me reading.

I thought, once so many names started popping up, that I’d get at least a few of them muddled, but the way it was written made it so easy to keep them all straight in your head and always had a way to hint who’s who.

Admittedly, I have a couple of complaints. Firstly, I kept forgetting that Lachlain had a Scottish accent until I read him saying “no’” instead of “not” and then my mind’s voice would automatically jump into the accent again, only to die off when he stopped speaking – though I’m not sure this can be blamed on the author. Also, the names got a little confusing – not to remember, but to pronounce and I had to guess at a lot of them; for example, I had to decide to pronounce “Lachlain” as “Lack-lan”, even though I kept trying to think “Lock-lin” or “Latchlin” simply because the first one sounds normal and the second one is how it appears to be said…

It’s an entertaining read for sure – definitely has it’s highly laughable moments, it’s tension, and it’s romance plus adventure.