I read a few book related websites and blogs and often know about upcoming books months before they hit the virtual shelves of Audible, but I must adm..Show More »it, this book came out of nowhere. I'd never heard of this series nor the author. I saw it in a sale a while back, liked the synopsis and thought I'd take a chance. Usually when this happens, I get a reasonably decent romance, but nothing to crow about. This book, however, was a quality piece of paranormal romantic fiction read by a marvelous narrator.

I didn't recognize Angela Dawe's name when I bought the book, but I sure recognized her voice. She was the fantastic narrator that brought Nalini Singh's Psy-changling series to heart pounding life. She pulls off some of the sexiest male voices I've ever came across from a female narrator. Combine her emotive voice with excellent pacing and flawless delivery and you get a truly marvelous audiobook experience.

The story line itself fits well within the paranormal romance genre, but it does have a nice twist to the vampire tale. The history behind the story is this: The world is struck by a pandemic, killing millions or humans as well as the vampires that drank from those infected. Following the pandemic, a vaccination is created and the vast majority of humans are vaccinated. Unfortunately, drinking blood from vaccinated humans has the same effect on vampires as drinking from the humans who were infected with the disease, making food supplies impossibly low for vampire-kind.

Our hero Aiden is trying to do his small part to rebuild the decimated vampire population, particularly those vampires in his inner circle of friends. He's done this by essentially buying a small Southern town and moving his vampire friends and their willing human blood donars (called fams) to this town. He finds more unvaccinated humans from the impoverished and addicted in the cities and offers them a second chance at life if they are willing to feed his kind.

The community aspect of this book is one of the elements that sets it apart from the herd of vampire fiction out there. The symbiotic relationship between human and vampires notwithstanding, there's a feeling of something a bit more than community, but not quite family, and Aiden is the leader, the founder and the cornerstone of it all.

After the town's physician, the human mate of one of the vampires, is killed, the town needs a new doctor, and our heroine, comes to Penton to fill this role. Expecting a quiet country life caring for the locals, she gets way more than she's bargained for.

All the elements are here. A brooding hero, a troubled but brilliant heroine, trusted sidekicks, unfaithful betrayers and a truly evil villain. Give it a try. It's a fantastic read on it's own, but it's also a promising start to a new series. I will be eagerly be looking for more work from this author.

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