Rachael works at the morgue on the night shift. She sleeps through the day, albeit she loves the sunlight. She sometimes uses this as an excuse for her lack of a social life – being asleep during the day and at work all night.

Rachael is overcome with the flu, when she encounters what she assumed a corpse with a bullet wound straight to the heart. Instead, her body is really Etienne, a 6’4″ blonde vampire, whose body is in stasis because of the heart wound delivered to him by his (rather dorky) villain, Pudge.

Technical Note: Sands’ vampires are really ancient humans but with nano’s (nanomachines) in their bloodstream. (She calls them “benign parasites,” although, technically, this seems more mutualism than parasitism.) These nano’s feed off blood to regenerate wounds, etc. Heart wounds can be fatal if a bullet is lodged in there for a while, as that would prevent the nano’s from doing their job. No curse, eternal damnation, or any of that dark stuff involved.

Rachael does her job removing the bullet for forensics, whilst recording her progress (Scully-like from X-Files). Etienne’s body is allowed to heal, and he escapes. Nothing happens for a while — well, the vampires celebrate a birthday by going to the movies and Etienne’s car gets blown up as he walks towards it; as a result, his body becomes utterly charred – and he’s back to the morgue as a “crispy critter.”

Rachael, whose memory has been altered by Etienne’s last appearance, has been having dreams about Etienne. She encounters him in his blackened charred form. Definitely dead for sure, right? Instead, however, bits of Etienne’s char flakes off and skin has regenerated beneath. Etienne’s assassin, the villain of the story, Pudge comes and attempts to behead him, resorting to this since his first kill attempt (bullet through heart) failed. Instead, he accidentally slices through Rachael.

In the intermittent confusion, Pudge escapes and Rachael is “turned” into a vampire by Etienne, who feels responsible for her death wound. Later, we will find out that Etienne also liked her from the very beginning. A vampire can only “turn” one lifemate because of population limiting reasons. (Incidentally, only one baby is allowed per 100 years.)

More technical details: much of the blood in the transfusion comes from IV’s hooked to bags of blood. Sands’ vampires have fangs which “jump out” at the sight of blood. Apparently, these fangs work with straws, quite fortunate, for the vampires who don’t like the taste of blood.

When Rachael is conscious again after her transformation, she goes through pages and pages and PAGES of denial. (Pain to read through since her excuses were a bit off-beat.) A good fifth of the book is spent on denial and disbelief of vampires.

Despite thinking Etienne is some crazed cult maniac, she finds him to possess sex-appeal. They share dreams that are almost steamy, but not quite sexy. (Unfortunately, the same description goes for Sands’ other explicit scenes.) After a while, Rachael accepts her new existence as a vampire. She is determined to continue her life as is despite her change in mortality.

Etienne, however, wishes to keep her in his home as long as possible. He makes her drink bad blood to deliberately sicken her, so that she would be dependent on him for food. (A wee bit childish. We’re talking an approx. 300 year old vampire trying to “trick” his lovemate, here…) On the other hand, “the Argeneau family,” requires that Rachael be convinced to lie about Pudge kidnapping her in order to solve the problem of the assassin. Etienne postpones telling her this, and eventually, this leads to Rachael’s distrust.

Apparently, Etienne is a solo game-programmer (which is rather unrealistic, nowadays). He created “Blood Lust,” which just happens to be Rachael’s favorite video game. This, along with other reasons, builds up Rachael’s “liking” of Etienne. But, sad to say, there isn’t really much love in this book, despite the title. There is, however, a whole lot of what seems like light infatuation and sex that’s significant enough only for brief casual flings.

In Love Bites, Sands’ romance abilities are really non-existent. There’s a beach scene and underwater sex scene, but it’s described bereft of the “umph” – for the lack of a better phrase – that a scene as emotional as that deserves. Although not as perverse as Bangs (Night Bites) to have shallow characters just lust after each other, yet act and think like children, Sands’ characters tend to, also, think in crude ways.

I had to force myself to read through the bulk of the novel, telling myself that the sooner I’m done with this, the sooner I can focus fully on the next (and hopefully less horrid) book. Rachael’s reasoning for a few chapters near the last part of the book deprecated to that of a 8 year old — in language, as well as logic! I understand that writers have deadlines to meet, but having to distort what is supposed to be a college/med-school-educated character instead of a bit of revision just further destroys Rachael’s character.

My rating for this book is primarily set by the lack of passionate-love-romance in the book. However, there are a few random perks that had me smiling.

The drinks offered by the Night Club were interesting, and if they were complemented with a bit more love in the resultant sex scenes, that might be worth an extra star. The vampire wedding was one of the better-written scenes, but the concept of such really detracts from the idea of a proper vampire… I guess the last bit would be my own personal requirement that vampires act a certain way — I mean, the “creatures” in this book might as well be called nano-droids, rather than vampires.

The penis biting was a bit amusing, and perhaps one of the sexier, but still not really sexy scenes, as both characters end up sickened by the clash of nano’s. Etienne’s family discovering this first-hand, as they deliver the blood, is also worth a smile.

Note: Apparently, vampires cannot bite each other – as that would lead to a profusion of nano’s in the biter’s and ingestor’s bloodstream. Nano’s consume blood and if there are too many of them the vampire, who does not have enough blood to feed them, is weakened.

As for naming: a vampire named Lucern — Lucerne? as in Safeway Select? Etienne already sounded too feminine to be a macho vamp name.

Anyway, if you’re up for the steamy, brooding, intelligent/wise, *dark*, vampire of passion, love, and eternal nights – you won’t find Him here; if you’re not up for a light read with pathetic vampires, then skip this, rather than be wrongfully disappointed. (…)

Rating: 3 / 5

I love this series of books! They are very funny and inventive! Great Read!
Rating: 5 / 5