Bite Me, I'm Yours



Bitten by Love, #2
Stacy McKitrick



Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Date of Publication: September 1, 2014
Number of pages: 292
Word Count: 92,308

Sarah's known monsters...and John isn't one.

Sarah's life isn't going well. She's divorced from an abusive jerk, been drugged, stuffed in her trunk and nearly kidnapped. Between that and a harsh winter, it's almost more than a girl can take. She's rightly distrusting of any man's affection, so an ice-skating date with John - who doesn't seem to feel the cold - isn't exactly on her bucket list. Yet something about him captures her attention.

John is determined to live as an ordinary mortal. He's moved into the city, bought a sports bar and works there as the bartender. As a new vampire, he's never considered dating, until he meets Sarah. Prudence dictates he stay away from her, but everything about her calls to him...right down to her cute animal socks.

Sure, finding out John is a vampire is scary, but Sarah's learned not all monsters have fangs. Besides, someone else isn't too happy about their budding relationship. Sarah will have to survive before getting her chance at love.

There was something about this cover, with the black and white characters and bold blood red word BITE, that drew me in. After reading the blurb, this sounded like a book I could get interested in. Additionally, this will be my first official kLover post (though I did request the book before I was approved).

When we first meet Sarah, she is on her way home from work. She has just left her work friend in the parking garage's elevator. As she is heading toward the bright yellow Xterra, that she habitually parks beside and has nicknamed Bumblebee, she gets attacked and very nearly kidnapped. If it weren't for John's timely arrival in the parking garage, Sarah would have been taken by serial killer.

When John spies a lone shoe on the floor next to his yellow SUV, he picks it up and smells strawberries, a scent that he often finds lingering around his car each day. He stops the attack and manages to get Sarah tucked into her car.  Then he leaves with the would be killer to insure that he turns himself in for his past crimes. When he gets back, Sarah has driven off. John feels depressed because he never got a chance to find out who the mystery woman who smelled of strawberries was, but thinks it is better this way.

Sarah is a woman with a lot of baggage and a metric ton of issues related to her baggage. While John appears more together, in actuality, he too has his share of issues and baggage. As these two characters come to know one another, they help each other grow. There were moments when I cheered them on, and others when I wanted to smack one or both of them upside the head with a "Snap out of it" a la Moonstruck. Seriously. What was so great was how each of the characters truly complemented the other, like two halves of a whole. It just took them awhile to figure out where each of the pieces went.

This was the second book in the series, but honestly, I never missed reading the first one and it would work well as a stand alone, since there was no cliffhanger to worry about.  I enjoyed this world the author created and can see myself reading more of her work. I gave this 3 stars.