Blood Slave (Nightlife Serie) Travis Ludke

Synopsis   

Her mother named her Esperanza Salvación - Hope for Salvation. But when a girl works as an escort for Colombian cartel in the ghettos of Spanish Harlem, there wasn’t much hope, or salvation. Hope’s telepathic ability keeps her a step ahead of ruin, but her unusual gift attracts the attention of a psychotic vampire bitch. Trapped in a Manhattan penthouse with the psycho, she thought she was dead meat.

Her survival lies in the hands of Vampire Master Enrique. He seems to respect her, perhaps even care. As a measure of protection, he makes her his personal Blood slave. Helplessly addicted to his bite, Enrique rules her every moment. As always, Hope must adapt to survive. Swept into the decadent nightlife of Manhattan's elite, she falls in love with Enrique and prays someday he may grow to love her, too. But is it simply a relationship of convenience? Is she nothing more than a concubine desperate to satisfy his nightly demands for blood and sex?

And forever in the background is the fear that one day the cartel boss she abandoned will hunt her down to collect on old debts.

Review

Blood Slave is one of two standalone books in the Nightlife Series, in this one we meet Hope an escort working for the Columbian Cartel living in Spanish Harlem. She is beholden to Foustino for a debt she’s paid many times over and her visa has expired which he won’t allow her to renew to keep in her place. The book starts with her next appointment an Asian women called Lia, who turns out to be a psychotic lesbian vampire, who wants to kill Hope as she can’t bespell her into forgetting there tryst, but can’t until she’s talked to her master. As we go through the book we find out what made Lia as she is, and Hope fears for her life when Lia continues to mentally torture Hope with visions of violent, gruesome ways to kill her.

Lia’s master turns out to be a hot Spanish vampire called Enrique, he is the epitome of a well healed gentleman who treats Hope with respect, giving her a job, clothes and jewellery whilst she provides him with sex and blood. Making Hope his blood slave is the only way he can protect her from Lia and help her to fit into their lives as he refuses permission for Lia to kill Hope. This a great story of a young women who is a victim of circumstance who is saved by a man normally well out of her reach

Throughout the book there is a lot of violence, torture and violent sex, but the way Travis deals with it, is not going blow by blow of the violence in minute detail. Instead he gives you a flavour of what is happening, whilst leaving your imagination to fill in the blanks. This is what I like about this Nightlife series, it doesn’t go into unnecessary gory details which the reader may not want, instead he leaves it to his readers to process it.

I’m not usually a fan of standalone books, as I feel I want to know more than the book gives, hence why I prefer series and trilogies. This book though is I think my favourite so far of in this series of books, it’s one where I got angry at the unfairness of Hope’s situation towards the latter part of the book where she is being abused by one of Foustino’s henchmen, as I wanted her to have her happy ending. Also I loved Hope who is a survivor and a very strong woman to go through what she did and come out fighting rather than giving in to her situation. Travis always manages to give such detailed back stories and characters you can’t help but like or loath.

I won’t lie, I didn’t like the fact this is a standalone book, I wanted to learn more about Hope and Enrique, but that is my personal issue. This is a great book, which I really enjoyed and would recommend it to anyone to read. It can be read as a one off, but it also sits well within the series though I would suggest starting with The Nightlife; New York. If you’re not sure whether to read the series, this is a great book to get a feel of how the author writes, how he deals with the subject matter and whether you want to read the rest although you should also be aware I wouldn’t recommended this series for those who have problems with violence and hard-core sexual activities in the books they read.

Once again the author demonstrates his ability to write great books which are a combination of sexy and sweet, so you'd think a woman wrote it, but it's tough and rough, so you know there's no doubt a man actually wrote the book.

I rate this book