Books 173, 174, 175, and 176: A Shade of Vampire Books 1-4

A Shade of Vampire (Book 1)

I will be honest, these books are completely shallow, romance novels with some action that I just couldn't put down. I started reading them at the gym- they were perfect to whittle away at the time I spent on the Stair-climber; completely enveloping but requiring no mental effort.

A Shade of Blood (Book 2

While shallow in plot and themes- they are well written. They have complex characters who grow throughout each book. They have suspenseful plots that keep you reading and even have twists that are hard to see coming.

I was going to continue to read them. I still may read the 5th book, but two things have kept me from continuing:

A Castle of Sand (Book 3)

1. The drama NEVER ends in an extreme way. These people solve one problem only to have the problem come back and be worse. There's a glaring problem with no solution. The "bad guys" are endlessly predictable and most are un-redeemable, making them unbelievable. There's only so much life or death of everyone at any moment drama I can read. It makes the fact that these books are already starting to exhaust that at book 4 that makes it frustrating. At this point there are more problems than solutions- how on earth can the author keep track or ever hope to solve them all?

A Shadow of Light (Book 4)

2. I looked up how many of these books there are. According to Goodreads: 55. 55 books of drama. No. They immediately fell from bad vampire book to actual drivel and there is NO way there is 55 books worth of story here. Now, the 55 books do not follow the same characters. They delve deeper into the story-lines of others and even go into different timelines. But 55 books? That's a commitment for not-so-great reading that I just don't have time for.

Now, those two reasons mean that I may finish out this story-line (which is supposed to end in book 5) and then stop. I may also never continue to read any more of these books. Even for an easy gym read, 55 is just too much and screams to me that these only get worse, probably much worse. I can say that the first 4 are easy and compelling reads. They definitely keep you hooked. But they are not good books. They're pretty terrible in the sense of literature. That's okay though. We all need a smutty read every so often.