Review: Guardian of the Night

Reviewed by Jen
 

Faith is an American doctor in Europe searching for her missing sister, Hope. She is told that a man named Mason LanVal may be able to help in her search. But on her way to seek him out, she is caught in an iron trap that nearly takes off her leg. She doesn't know it, but local vampires set the trap and others like it to catch animal and human prey. Fortunately, Mason picks up the scent of her blood first and rescues her.

Mason is like a vampire in many ways, but he is stronger and has a greater purpose. He was created to be one of the seven blood knights, tasked with protect the purity of the bloodline and taking down anyone that would abuse its power. He considers lower vampires to be monsters in need of extermination.

Faith is in really bad shape when he finds her and the only way Mason can save her is with a drop of his own blood. He does this and ends up creating a blood bond between them. Mason is inexplicably drawn to Faith, even in her minimal consciousness. And he senses some Otherness in her, which turns out to be a Were ancestry that she didn't even know existed.

He takes her to the local were pack to heal. And the rest of the book follows Mason as he searches for Faith's sister and tries to figure out who has made all the new vampires in his area. Meanwhile, Faith must come to terms with her heritage and her strange new connection to Mason.

I didn't love this one. My biggest problem with this "romance" was the fact that the hero and heroine only spend about 1/10 of the book in each other's company. It felt like almost the entire first half of the story was spent in Mason's head. His fantasizing about Faith, his questions about Hope, his bemoaning of his solitary life. It got really old. Beyond that, the world-building was not great. I didn't entirely get the point of the creation of the seven knights and I didn't really care. Then you throw Faith's sister into the mix and it all got even murkier. How the villain plotted her and Faith into his master plan just didn't make sense without a little ESP on his part. It was just... a mess.

And the romance was kind of lame. Too much pining. Not enough payoff.

Rating: D+

*ARC Provided by NetGalley

Click to purchase: Amazon

Guardian of the Night

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

Release Date: May 22, 2012

Publisher: Harlequin Nocturne