Tempted by Midnight
Once, they lived in secret alongside mankind. Now, emerged from the shadows, the Breed faces enemies on both sides—human and vampire alike. No one knows that better than Lazaro Archer, one of the eldest, most powerful of his kind. His beloved Breedmate and family massacred by a madman twenty years ago, Lazaro refuses to open his heart again.
Sworn to his duty as the leader of the Order’s command center in Italy, the last thing the hardened warrior wants is to be tasked with the rescue and safekeeping of an innocent woman in need of his protection. But when a covert mission takes a deadly wrong turn, Lazaro finds himself in the unlikely role of hero with a familiar, intriguing beauty he should not desire, but cannot resist.
Melena Walsh has never forgotten the dashing Breed male who saved her life as a child. But the chivalrous hero of her past is in hard contrast to the embittered, dangerous man on whom her safety now depends. And with an unwanted—yet undeniable—desire igniting between them, Melena fears that Lazaro’s protection may come at the price of her heart….
Stroke of Midnight
Born to a noble Breed lineage steeped in exotic ritual and familial duty, vampire warrior Jehan walked away from the luxurious trappings of his upbringing in Morocco to join the Order’s command center in Rome.
But when a generations-old obligation calls Jehan home, the reluctant desert prince finds himself thrust into an unwanted handfasting with Seraphina, an unwilling beauty who’s as determined as he is to resist the antiquated pact between their families.
Yet as intent as they are to prove their incompatibility, neither can deny the attraction that ignites between them. And as Jehan and Seraphina fight to resist the calling of their blood, a deadly enemy seeks to end their uneasy truce before it even begins….
Midnight Untamed
The mission was supposed to be simple. Infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold outside Rome and eliminate its leader. For a Breed warrior as lethal as Ettore Selvaggio, AKA “Savage”, stealth assassinations are only one of his many cold-hearted specialties. But the last thing Savage expects to find behind enemy lines—in his target’s bed—is a woman he once adored.
It’s been years since Savage last saw beautiful Arabella Genova. Years he’s strived to banish to his past, along with the fierce desire he once felt toward Bella . . . and the irresistible calling of her blood that stirs in him even now, despite the fact that she belongs to another male.
But when fate throws Savage and Bella together again in a race for their lives, will his long-lost love prove to be the one woman he can’t live without, or the perfect weapon to destroy him?
Midnight Breed Bundle, by Lara Adrian
Novellas are tricky for me. I like long stories; when I read fan fiction, I always find myself arrowing in on the 100,000+ word masterpieces. By those standards, a novella is …well, short. There’s less character development. Less time to get inside the heads of the characters and understand what makes them tick.
(I’m also not sure if I can write a novella but that probably says more about me than anything else.)
Anyway, I can appreciate it when the novellas are bundled, like this set are, but that also makes writing the review tricky. Especially since my reviews tend to be long and it feels a little like the review would end up being nearly as long as the novella. (Not quite. It’s a feeling, nothing more.) For this set in particular, I also feel like the reviews might get a little repetitive, because it felt like the stories were a little repetitive. I might not recommend reading all three in one sitting.
The Midnight Breed series is another take on vampires, where the Breed (as vampires are called) are born that way. They mate with women who share some genetic component of what makes them Breed; these women are known as Breedmates and can be identified by the special birthmark that appears somewhere on their body. If a Breed male drinks from a Breedmate, he is bonded to her and can feel her emotions until she dies. To complete the bond, the Breedmate also drinks from the male.
What’s not clear from these novellas is, among other things, whether this bond is required in order to procreate or if there is some other benefits to doing so. Also unclear are a lot of things about being Breed in general — each Breed male or Breedmate has some special gift, unique to them, but the reasons for these gifts (or how the Breed came about or what restrictions being Breed places on the males in exchange for the physical gifts) are left a mystery. Some of this is probably because they are novellas and there’s not a lot of time for exposition and some of this might have been because it could be part of an established universe. I was unclear which was which.
As can happen a lot in this subgenre, at least in my experience, all three stories have at least some amount of insta-lust going on. (Lust is definitely the right term here, although it gets dressed up as love; the novellas might be short but they don’t skimp on the sex scenes. If that’s not your cup of tea, beware.) A lot of the tension in the books comes from the external threats posed by humans who are upset by the Breed’s existence and want to eliminate them, but it feels like this is something overlooked when dealing with it would get in the way of the love story. (For example, the first novella starts out with the death of two very important people coming together to talk peace between humans and the Breed, the consequences of which are never realized in the course of the story. Or any of the subsequent novellas either.)
On the other hand, there are a few parts that I enjoyed? Stroke of Midnight was my favorite, despite the very strong insta-lust that drove the main portion of the plot. It was easy to related to two people trying to live up to their families’ expectations. The heroine from Tempted by Midnight was at least not willing to let the hero wallow in his self-pity and guilt, although I might have wanted to slap her for a few other things. Midnight Untamed had a few new questions to add to the mix but also just …was, I guess?
I think these novellas probably work best if you are a fan of this particular subgenre and looking for something quick to scratch the itch. They’re well-written and judging from the Amazon reviews have their fair share of fans; I just look for something more than insta-lust to develop the relationship and didn’t really find it here.