One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Novella in the Biting Love Series World
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: Novella
Formats: Kindle


If you're unfamiliar with Mary Hughes' Biting Love series...well...rectify that as soon as possible, but don't start here. The series starts with Bite My Fire and continues with the stronger second installment, Biting Nixie, and they're fun, relatively light, but definitely sexy/steamy/erotic vamp romance novels that blend humor and danger together quite nicely. The Bite of Silence is a novella-length story within the world, though not necessarily considered a part of the series, and but it falls in the timeline between Biting Nixie and Biting Me Softly, the third book in the series. Hughes has managed to condense the best parts of her books and deliver a powerful, funny, sexual, and surprisingly complete tale in a much smaller package. I believe, however, that this story would definitely feel lacking to anyone unfamiliar with the series, so start from the beginning.

In The Bite of Silence, Nixie's best friend Twyla, Admin. Assistant for the mayor of Meier's Corners, is off to the Big Apple for a little New Year's Eve partying. When she boards the plane, however, she finds the object of her most delicious fantasies seated in first class. Niko is tall, dark, and destructively gorgeous...and Twyla's also pretty sure he's a vampire...but he has stubbornly refused to give her the time of day since he moved to town, so a two hour flight with the vamp is just what the vacation gods ordered. Niko's not as unaffected by the delectable and funny Twyla as she thinks, however...and her "vacation" surely isn't going to go as smooth as she'd hoped when she realizes that someone's trying to turn all the vampires in NYC into slavering, bloodthirsty beasts as the ball drops on the New Year and Twyla and Niko are the only two who can save a madman from destroying them all.

Points to Hughes for delivering a very well-rounded story in such a short format. There's even a bit more character development than I'd anticipated - and something that's so often lacking in stories of this length. Admittedly, I've read the first two books, so I'm already familiar with Hughes' world and vampire mythos, and I don't think that the book would read nearly as well for someone who isn't, so I rate it four stars for lacking any real world building at all. Other than that - very well told.