Burns Night Books

This book was ok. It's the first one that I have read by her. She is not my favorite writer but certainly worthy of praise. I enjoyed the book and will most likely purchase more from her in the future.

the books were great i couldnt put them down and i was mad when it was over

This collection is the first three vampire romances from Susan Sizemore which have been bundled together in one volume, "Crave The Night", although they are also available separately.

"I Burn For You" is the story of Domini Lancer, a woman who works for her grandfather's company which is a security/bodyguarding service. Domini's parents are both dead and she and her grandfather have a close and sparky relationship.

The story begins with Domini having a strange dream or premonition. We learn that she sometimes gets these and they tend to be true - she has some psychic powers which she tries to ignore. Domini's compulsion is to walk to the local market to buy some peaches - when she arrives there she sees a strange man and sees a voice in her head. She's a little spooked and rushes back off to work.

Alexander Reynard is the man she saw across the marketplace - except that he's not a man, he's a vampire. Vampires are able to live in daylight and avoid their problems with garlic and silver if they take the right series of drugs. Alec is discovering that his drugs aren't working entirely properly for him, but he suddenly bumps into Domini and realises instantly that she's his bondmate - the woman he is destined to partner. It's a bad time with him because of his health problems - the imbalance in the drugs can cause him to become a feral vampire and out of control.

Alec is a former Delta Forces operative and is hired by Domini's grandfather for bodyguard detail. Of course as soon as he walks into the building and meets Domini his problems escalate. Domini's friend Holly, a singing star, has had death threats and both Domini and Alec are detailed to protect her. It takes a little while before they realise that the death threats are actually a little closer to home, and that there are secrets in Domini's family history which can be dangerous.

The beginning of this book was pretty good - I found the explanation of the bodyguarding detail interesting. However it pretty soon degenerated into a love-fest with descriptions of Alec as Mr Dishy and übermale and various psychic/telepathic thoughts of sex between them. Domini seems pretty dense not to realise he's a vampire and he seems pretty dense not to explain things to her earlier - although this would have been disadvantageous to the plot. There's a thin line trod between masculine eagerness and violence towards Domini and I'm not sure the line was in the right place - somehow I didn't find him a very engaging hero; it was all about his looks and body and his actual personality seemed a bit one-dimensional. Equally I couldn't see what was so great about Domini - she seemed to spend a lot of her time getting angry with him, apart from the time she was in bed with him.

The book moves towards a crescendo ending which was actually rather a damp squib. There is some interesting world-building in that there are different kinds of vampires and Alec's actually the member of a group who serve mortals and try to keep them safe, but it wasn't enough to redeem a rather thin plot. Overall I found the book disappointing.


I Thirst For You is the second of Susan Sizemore's vampire romance novels set in the modern day. In this world, vampires live alongside mortals, pay taxes, have normal jobs, but their vampire nature is hidden from humans. This is an interesting new take on vampires and mortals and I like the way it's panning out so far.

Josephine Elliott is a former pilot who was flying a plane which crashed, causing some fatalities. Since the accident which left her with some scars she has been unable to fly and spends a lot of time camping on her own out in the desert - this is partly because she's developed some psychic abilities since the accident which mean she can read minds. Not very restful.

At the beginning of this story she's camping out again when she is kidnapped by a large, scary man. This man, Marcus Cage, keeps her prisoner in the car and then in a hotel room. She initially fears rape but eventually discovers that the situation that she's in is not that of a traditional kidnappee. Marc Cage is a strange person and she tries to understand what's going on, especially when she discovers she can communicate with him telepathically. Like all good vampires in fiction, he doesn't explain to her what's going on so she's always rather in the dark about things.

Marc has escaped from a group of people who are carrying out experiments on him and he knows it's vital that he gets clean away. However, discovering his bondmate, Jo, has rather put a spanner in the works.

Like the previous book by this author, "I Burn For You", the major thread of this book is the bondmate relationship between the two principal characters and their sex life together. There's a lot of sex in this - too much really, it got repetitive - and not really too much character development or understanding. Again the motif of dreams that are partly telling the future is used and there are vast tracts of conversations held all in the mind between the two of them, signified by writing in italics; I often found it difficult to keep track of who was saying what.

I found this book overall a disappointment, as with the previous one. There are some fairly exciting scenes when they escape imprisonment and another time when they are running from a forest fire but mostly it's a bit sedentary and repetitive. There are a couple of interesting side characters, one introduced at the end is the hero of the next book, but there's nothing really deep and engaging about our main characters. They meet, they fall in lust, they have lots of sex and it's all a bit boring really. There's plenty of potential in the world she's built with the Clans, Families and Tribes - I just wish the author had made better use of it.



I Hunger For You is the third of Susan Sizemore's vampire stories and it mentions some of the characters from her previous books, I Burn For You and I Thirst For You. It also introduces a couple of new characters and I have a strong suspicion there might be books about them in the offing.

There are good things about this series - the worldbuilding is interesting: vampires live alongside mortals and have jobs (the hero of this book, Colin Foxe, is a SWAT police officer), they can go about in daylight if they take particular drugs and they sometimes have relationships with mortals.

The heroine of this book is Caramia Luchese, a fit young woman who finds herself involved in a hostage situation to which Colin Foxe is called. After they meet they have a three month affair which Foxe eventually breaks off - he is a vampire and doesn't want anything long term with a mortal.

However neither of them are able to forget about the other and Colin finds himself virtually stalking Mia and comes to her rescue when other vampires of the Tribe (who treat mortals as lunch) try to attack her. It's not entirely clear initially why the Tribe are so interested in Mia and she and Colin don't ever seem to get much opportunity to actually discuss anything as they are always jumping into bed.

Like in the previous two books, the main thing that seems to bind heroine and hero together is sex. In this book, however, Colin doesn't want to even consider Mia as a long-term partner as he is dismissive of mortals. Over the course of the book he learns that some things are more powerful than his preconceived ideas. Mia is from a family of vampire hunters whose mission is to rid the world of all vampires, even those from the Clan (who work to protect mortals), such as Colin. There is the tension between the two of them, an antagonism, that is there when they aren't having sex; fortunately for them they seem to spend most of their time having sex so get along quite well.

This book revisits the case of the Patron who escaped Colin at the end of the last book (I Thirst For You). Colin is focused on finding the Patron and stopping him but he finds Mia is both a spanner in the works and an aid to his mission. But can either of them trust each other?

I found parts of this book rather slow and, like the other two novels, the characterisation seemed rather one-dimensional. The author evidently likes her Alpha Males (or "Primes") in these books and the vampires tend to seem rather caveman-like over their women. This book did improve and get more exciting towards the end but the plot always felt rather like something to hang the sex part of the book around, rather than the major point of the novel.

It's an OK read but, like the other two books, nothing very special. There are many significantly better vampire books out there which have a plot and some characters alongside the worldbuilding that is important in these stories.

Having read one of Strete's longer works, I was anxious to see what he would do with the short story. Of course some stories in this collection are better than others, but all in all, a worthwile find. One story in particular "Love Life of the Leg-lorn" is written with Strete's talent for turning a phrase for which I admired his longer work. This hilarious and witty story calls to mind a sligtly crazed Douglass Adams.