I personally would not categorize this novella in the romance genre due to all of the blood, gore and death - there are several murdered girls that decay rapidly, the protagonist, Emily's dog is decapitated and its entrails and body parts are draped around her home. These type of things don't exactly put a reader in a romantic mood. Sure, there is a sex scene in the last half of the story, but sex alone does not a romance make. According to the Romance Writers of America, a romance should focus primarily on the relationship between two people and must have an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending, one of unconditional love. Emily obviously does not feel that way about Mark, her Hunter lover, by story ending, as she is still intrigued by and drawn to vampire Michael. None of the main characters are more than one dimensional personas, none are developed enough to allow a reader to empathize and feel for them and root for either their happiness or demise. Antagonist Raphael is written as a stereotypical bad guy, and his intense hatred for and desire to hurt fellow vampire Michael is never explained. There is never one instance of any character expressing or revealing any true emotion; if the characters cannot feel anything, why should I, as a reader, feel anything? The first six chapters held minor grammar, spelling and tense issues that were somewhat easily overlooked by this reader. Michael's description as a deathly pale blonde yet referred to as a "tall-dark-bad-boy" were contrasts that did not fit, at all. However, from chapter seven to the end, there were so many grammar and sentence structure errors such as: "They surround me as I sit in a crosslegged inside a circle, somewhere in the outdoors" (Chapter 10), tossed this reader completely out of the story. In a crosslegged, what? This sentence would make better sense if a single word was inserted - stance. Read as, "I sit in a crosslegged stance" makes considerably more sense because crosslegged is a descriptor of a type of posture. Time and/or editing errors such as Mark walking Emily to his truck, also in chapter 10, where she asks Mark if he saw the creature/vampire, "...once he has me up in his truck" and then, on the very next page, "Mark begins to lead me towards his truck" (Chapter 10), again tossed this reader right out of Belsky's world and back into reality with a big, fat, huh?!? The writing was so poor - or rather, the complete lack of editing - it took this reader almost two weeks to read this 97 page story. Like others have mentioned, this reader found the cover art to be quite lovely. Unfortunately, the story itself did not live up to the art. This is book one in a planned series and this reader will not be back for book two - too many grammar, spelling, punctuation, tense issues, and missing words, added to nonexistent character development left this reader with a headache and absolutely no interest to revisit Belsky's world. This reader was asked to read the story, for an honest review. I cannot recommend this book. ** Review originally posted to Amazon reviews on September 21, 2016. **
