Vampire Most Wanted (Argeneau, #20)

by Lynsay Sands

[nitzan_schwarz]

2.5 stars

My first instinct was to give this 3 stars but honestly? I'm sitting here after finishing this book wondering if I even know anything in specific about these characters and that's just... that's the worst, you know?

Some books make you feel like you know these folks as well as you know yourself--they are real, breathing people simply contained to the pages of the book. In your mind, they are vibrant and alive and you know they continue after you close the book because they are that real. And some books, like this one, makes you scratch your head and wonder if these characters will rip if you try to touch them because they are that thin y'all.

And yes, books like this are good for certain moods. From a certain point, I turned my brain off and just let myself have meaningless fun with it. It took about 30% to do so and broke on occasion when I just could help it, but for the most part... I did it. Yat?

And still, I definitely think this book was lacking on many fronts. So this story is Basha Divine and Marco's. You learn all you're going to know about these two very early on: She is a brave, smart, and resilient woman who takes care of others. He is a thoughtful, strong man who takes care of others. The only other thing we learn is that she had a horrific backstory. And even then, we know this very shallowly as this book never actually commits to anything that happened to Basha.

And... that's it. They never become more than these few traits strung around in a sentence, not even to each other. It's almost like reading a character sheet, with just about as much details. I literally don't know anything else about them. At all.

So you can imagine how well I took to their "I love yous". While I find the whole Life Mate thing ridiculous as a whole, this is the first book I've read of this series (granted, I only read three so far) that I felt used it a lazy excuse to barely have any relationship development if at all, not to mention any character development to speak of. Like, it didn't feel like they did anything because they wanted to know each other, but rather because they are life mates and such. I didn't like that, at all. So the I Love Yous were cute but ultimately I didn't believe a bit of them.

Most of this read I felt absolutely nothing for these characters and their stories, and if that's not a terrible sign I don't know what is.