Review: Assassin by Angela Addams

Publisher: Cobblestone Press

Where did you get this book: Won from an author contest

Release date: Available now

This review contains spoilers!

Blurb taken from Cobblestone website:

As an Assassin trained by the human government to hunt vampires, Stella knows a thing or two about killing. She’s an expert huntress, follows orders and obeys her commander without fault. That is until she sees her newest target and finds herself enthralled, unable to complete her mission to capture the mysterious vampire named Garrett.

Betraying all that she has ever known, Stella must accept Garrett’s help to find the buried secrets of her past while at the same time exploring the unexplainable physical magnetism that she and Garrett share.

Every once in a while, I read erotic romance, and when I received my copy of Assassin, I couldn’t wait to have the time to read it. The author had posted a couple of big excerpts on her blog and it sounded perfectly yummy.

The set-up of this story was fabulous. Governement engineered Dhamphirs are trained to hunt and destroy their vampire brethren, but something makes Stella/Violet (the dual names make sense in the story) fight to save Garrett. She betrays the assassins and everything she knows for this single vampire she can’t get out of her mind. Together, Stella/Violet and Garrett set out after the very government that created her.

My problem with the plot was it felt rushed and occasionally garbled. While I understand it was an erotic romance, I would have liked a little more plot between the sex scenes. Everything fell in place a little to conveniently for my taste. Except the witch who messed with Violet’s (picking a name for convenience) mind. For me, the little tidbits about that moment weren’t clear enough to do anything other than confuse me as a reader. I kind of wish there had been a single bigger flashback scene to give us the situation and then cut from where Violet couldn’t remember.

I did love the back-story between Garrett and Violet though and thought it fit beautifully into the plot. It was probably my favorite part of the plot.

There were both highs and lows with the sex (though that’s generally a problem for me with erotic romance). I loved the opening sex scene, and for once, I never had an issue with the way Garrett and Violet would stop everything and have sex. In fact, the one time when normally I would have rolled my eyes and said, “Of course, walk into a dangerous situation and choose that moment to do it,” I liked the sex. In that particular case it worked because of the danger. There were a few others where the sex didn’t do as much for me and I wanted to have more emotion from the characters to draw me in, but the ones that worked made up for those.

In all, this was a very quick, fun read for me. While I’m not sold on Assassin as stand-alone, it sets up future stories well, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next for Garrett and Violet.

I give Assassin 4.o stars.