Review: Desire by Blood by Melissa Schroeder
Melissa Schroeder launches the By Blood series with Anna Lacey, a witch-touched bookseller in New Orleans, and Aiden, a vampire who’s been low-key stalking her for reasons she’d really like him to explain. Someone’s killing women who look exactly like Anna, and Aiden’s not letting her out of his sight. Classic setup, served hot.
Schroeder writes a smooth, fast-burning paranormal romance, and Desire by Blood moves quickly enough that you can knock it out in a single afternoon. The New Orleans setting is leaned on a little (every paranormal romance writer in the early 2010s discovered the French Quarter at the same time, apparently), but Schroeder gives it some flavor instead of just name-dropping Bourbon Street. Aiden is the standard tortured-immortal type, but I appreciated that he doesn’t spend the whole book sulking; he actually communicates with Anna for stretches, which is more than I can say for half the heroes in this subgenre.
My complaints are real, though. The mystery thread is thin. The killer’s identity is telegraphed early and the suspense never builds the way it needs to for a romantic suspense crossover. The worldbuilding around vampire/witch politics is also doled out in big infodump chunks, especially in the first third. I wanted more showing, less explaining.
And the soul-bond/mate trope shows up in full force. If you’ve read any vampire romance from the past fifteen years you know the beats: scent, claim, the whole package. Schroeder doesn’t subvert it so much as enthusiastically perform it, which is fine if you’re in the mood for that and a slog if you’re not.
For who? Fans of J.R. Ward starter books, Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed, or anyone who wants vampire romance comfort food without too much grimdark. Not for readers who need their paranormals to be doing something genuinely new.
I’ll grab book two. That’s about the highest compliment a series opener gets from me.