Quickie Review: Born to Bite by Lynsay Sands

I would call this one Vampire Gone Country. It has all of the Argeneau trappings we normally see, except this one is set in the farmland of southern Canada.

I keep hoping for the old Lynsay Sands. The one who wrote laugh-out-loud books for Dorchester. Not the slightly amusing romantic suspense books with vampires in them she seems to write for Avon.

Given the recent problems with Dorchester, it seems Sands made a good move to leave them...but did she have to give up her signature style as well? I don't know if it was pressure from the publisher or a different editor, but every single book since she joined Avon has been...meh. I used to love the Argeneau series. Single White Vampire is probably the funniest paranormal romance ever published. The books since Sands's move to Avon are far too serious to be funny and not gritty enough to be good Urban Fantasy.

There are too many characters in this book and too much backstory (If you haven't read the previous books, don't start with this one!) There's nothing here at all that is surprising or engaging. It was a decent read, but the romance doesn't develop so much as appear and the whodunnit aspect is very predictable. Fans of the series will probably like this one, but Sands has written far better books than this one.

My Grade: C-

The Renegade Hunter by Lynsay Sands

I normally adore Lynsay Sands's Argeneau series. They're usually very well done in a genre that is, well, overexposed. The characters are more normal--more human--than characters in most other paranormals. But most of all, they're usually funny.

I have to say I'm horribly disappointed by this book. The hero, Nicholas, was quite intriguing. A definite break from the standard Argeneau guy, although he was a bit too emotionally wimpy for my tastes. But it was the heroine in the novel that irritated me.

She seemed completely clueless with no basic self-preservation instincts. While she was extremely with it in the emotional and critical thinking arenas surrounding Nicholas's crimes, she was otherwise too stupid to be believable. The death knell to her believability was a single paragraph in the novel. One where Nicholas --who is VERY old in typical vampire fashion--references I Love Lucy. And our heroine has no idea what he's talking about.

Now, I understand the point the author was trying to convey. What I object to is two-fold: it had the subtlety of a cast iron skillet to the head AND was wildly improbable. Perhaps Ms. Sands credits the under 30 generation with no pop culture lexicon, but Lucille Ball was NOT just a TV star from the 1950s. She was an icon ala Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and others. She spanned generations. And who has not caught at least a glimpse of her while flipping past Nick at Nite? I understand the dilemma here: you need a reference your reader will get while the heroine does not. But Lucy? C'mon.

It could very well be that the reference sprang from a real world occurrence where a "young" person didn't know who Lucy was. But that person would be in the minority of the population. In any rate, it tossed me completely out of the narrative and soured the entire character for me.

What finished the disappointment was the complete lack of humor in this novel. I buy a Lynsay Sands book expecting to be smiling while reading a portion of it. I didn't find anything funny about this book. Not one thing. Which means Ms. Sands just got dumped off of my auto-buy list.