Shades of Midnight-Lara Adrian

Shades of Midnight
Lara Adrian
Dell, Dec 29 2009, $7.99
ISBN: 9780440245261

In frozen Alaska, nineteen year old Teddy Toms returns to his family compound only to find everyone dead. A gigantic humanoid creature appears and kills him too.

Bush pilot Alexandra Maguire lands at the Toms compound to deliver supplies only to be greeted eerily by corpses with bite marks on them. She has seen these bite marks before when her mother and younger brother were murdered. Alex and her father tried to move on and get passes what the monsters did to her family by leaving Florida for Alaska. The pilot notices a gigantic footprint in the nearby snow, but says nothing to the authorities.

After seeing a clip of the carnage, the Order sends warrior vampire Breed Kade to investigate what appears to be a rogue in bloodlust. He has lived his entire life on his family’s Darkhaven estate to take care of his brother who has an uncontrolled violent streak. Kade thinks the predator is his brother Seth who has killed humans before, but he soon realizes that this massacre is the work of the Ancient other worlder who escaped captivity. Alex and Kade meet with each incredibly attracted to the other. She realizes as she falls in love there are good and evil Breed and her beloved must be the former as he risks his life for her. She leads him to a defunct mine where the evil Breed reside led by the malevolent grandson of the Ancient: Dragos.

The seventh Midnight Breed tale is a compelling action-packed thriller from the onset with the slaughter at the Toms compound. Both protagonists have demons to overcome as Kade fears he will turn out like Seth did and Alex fears loving a monster like the vampire in her nightmarish past. Lara Adrian provides her fans with a strong tundra romantic fantasy as the human and the vampire find love and death in the frozen wasteland.

Harriet Klausner