Nighlife; New York by Travis W Luedke

Synopsis     

The Nightlife Series is violent, sexy, and occasionally violently sexy.

Vampires, strippers, escorts, night clubs, pimps and dirty cops – the Nightlife New York is never boring.

Aaron Pilan’s life is forever changed when he’s shot trying to rescue a drop-dead gorgeous woman on the streets of New York. Aaron is thrust into the shocking world of vampiric slavery when Michelle shares her blood to save his life.

Michelle's existence as a solitary vampire is also altered when she accepts this naive young man into her life. Bound by her blood, Aaron is subject to her authority. He walks a tightrope of strictly controlled feeding regiments and intense sexual adventures while catering to the neurotic control-freak tendencies of his new master. She vows to eliminate him if he proves too difficult to control.

This story is bold and evocative, infusing blood, sex, love and turmoil in an urban drama about two vampires battling evil outside and within themselves.

Review

Aaron is a quiet 22 year old who works in an Italian Restaurant, and at the end of a long shift he clocks of at midnight, intending to pick up a case of beer and head home. That is until he sees a drop dead gorgeous woman in the street, who has been stopped by a couple of corrupt cops for soliciting. As they try to arrest her, Aron goes to intervene and ends up being shot by one of the police men, leaving the woman with a decision that could change both their lives.

The drop dead gorgeous women turns out to be a vampire called Michelle, it is so refreshing to have a female vampire as the lead character instead of the traditional male. It adds a whole new angle to a book about vampires, but just as the male vampires in modern times are totally hot with a body to die for, Michelle is the female equivalent, being 5 foot with all the right curves in all the right places. Michelle turns Aaron into a vampire, and I really enjoyed watching his progression from a new vampire into a strong, self-assured male equivalent to her.

The book is full of characters who frequent the dirtier side of night life in New York, you have the pimp who is held to ransom by dirty cops along with strippers, hookers and the ‘escorts services’ all of whom provide the perfect backdrop for a vampire to feed, the author brings to life the seedier side of life in a city that never sleeps. His way of writing is concise, clear and original, he doesn’t need lots of twists and turns to keep the reader engaged, the burgeoning relationship between Michelle and Aaron does that for you.  Travis presents his readers with a well thought out novel in which he has a knack for blending erotica and violence with romance and action to keep me reading the book

Although there are erotic parts to the book, it isn’t gratuitous and it is appropriate to the story line, adding depth to the book. I also liked the idea of a living vampire who ages extremely slowly, but retains the superior strength, the feeding and the mind controlling stare of the more traditional undead and don’t forget the sleeping all day! I also liked the idea of short timed feeding from the cattle aka humans and the way they feed in public on nightclub dance floors adding to the underlying dangerous nature of a vampire.

I enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to others, especially if you want an easy read, that doesn’t depend on you having to concentrate hard to keep track of the characters and all the twists and turns you find in other books. The best recommendation I can give, is that I’ve just started reading the second book in the series Nightlife; Las Vegas, as I enjoyed the first so much.

I rate this book