Book Review: Eat Prey Love by Kerrelyn Sparks

Before I even start talking about the book I have to first address the name. When I first saw the name this was my reactions "Pahahahaha" (the P is there to let you know I made this sorta strange noise before I began to laugh.) after that I made that noise that drummers make when they tell puns or jokes. You know its sorta 'dadum tish.'

Okay so back to the book bit. This book is part of a series that Sparks writes and I haven't read them in a while so when I picked up the book there was about four minutes of "who the f*** is this? wait what? who's talking?" After awhile I got my bearings because after the birthday party was over the extreme number of old characters went down to hardly anything so that was better. But seriously talking about nearly every old character in the first twenty pages or so really confuses me.

So this book is about Carlos Panterra who is a were-panther and apparently in one of the previous books he pretended to be gay at some point but I didn't remember that so when they had this big scene for him to hash out that he was straight my reaction was: Well yeah I read the back. Anyway his love interest is Caitlyn Whelan who is the younger sister of the girl who had the very first book, and whose family is the central connector of all the books. So um yes.

We get the same song and dance of taking a human and trying to explain to them that vampires and shapeshifters are real and then we get Carlos trying to resist his desire for Caitlyn because he needs to find a were-panther to save his species. Also Caitlyn is magical and can understand any language so there is that part put in but seeing as nothing is ever written in another language its mostly a plot device for the travel part later, and when they mentioned that I knew there was going to be travel.

I feel like the romance as a little forced, and not because of the time constraints like I normally do. I think it was rushed because I was near page 300 and there had been no sex. Sure there had been some heavy making out but that was few and far between. On the other hand the plot was really on top. I mean I was with it and interested and I get the feeling that so was the author. I think Sparks might have gotten to about page 250 and gone "oh crap I forgot about the romance bit."

One other thing, I can't take the name Carlos seriously after seeing The Hangover. I mean really. I was trying really hard to not laugh.

Anyway the book was a good read and progresses the on going plot arc by adding a new bad guy to contend with and introducing a few new male characters for future books. But really the story did little to the overall bad guy and his plot to destroy us all. I get the feeling the new bad guy is just here to kill time so we have more males to write about, because if they catch the main bad guy before everyone has a book the series will lose its spark.

I  vote library unless you already have a collection going for this series.

The Vampire and the Virgin by Kerrelyn Sparks

There is this moments that happens in a lot of fantasy romance novels, where a heroine is suddenly told that they handsome man she just met is a vampire/werewolf/zombie/mummy/goat/a car/the spawn of Satan/etc. At this point he will say that she has to trust him, even though they just met three days ago, she needs to trust him because they are meant for each other. I normally gag or roll my eyes for a few minutes before i go on reading.

In the past Sparks has been one of the authors that has been notorious for these moments. Not this time ladies. This time the characters have a long distance skype relationship for several months. Also the leading female has this creepy stalker serial killer.

But really other than that this is a formulaic book. Sparks has a formula and she sticks to it. Girl is doing somethings, girl bumps into guy. Guy is vampire. (only two books of the entire series have not done this) They have passionate encounters. Girl notices she can only meet guy at night/he has no reflection/drinking of the fake blood. She has minor freak out. He explains to a point. She is weary. Evil vampires attempt to kill her/him/them/others. They bound deeper. In the next book they have a wedding.

I was not expecting anything new and i didn't really get it. The only difference is because there is a few months that are skimmed over when the girl finds out that her beau is a vampire she doesn't completely flip and takes the whole "trust me" better because she knows him. Besides this one change i am pretty much underwhelmed.