The Nightlife; San Antonio by Travis Luedke Review

Synopsis   

Chock-full of vampires, mafia & mayhem, this wicked blend of dark romance and paranormal fantasy from New York Times and USA Today bestseller Travis Luedke is an indulgent sinful pleasure.

The Nightlife is violent, sexy, and occasionally violently sexy, and San Antonio starts with blood on the floor.

EMT on call, Adrian Faulkner resuscitates a beautiful woman after a Mexican mafia shootout. He can't explain why he picks her up in the hospital parking lot three days later and then ducks the San Antonio police – and the Feds.

She needed to hide. With no memory of even her name, she didn't know from who. She only knew she wasn't safe. Lucky to survive, all she wants is to escape the police.

Looking to hit it and quit it, all Adrian wants is to get laid. They both got more than they bargained for.

The naked woman tangled in Adrian’s sheets and his life is far more than a damsel in distress, and now he’s stuck with her. All hell breaks loose as the past she can’t remember catches up with them both…

Review

The Nightlife; San Antonio is the second standalone book in The Nightlife series by Travis Luedke. We meet Adrian Falkner in the beginning of the book as he works as an EMT, his back ground is that of the military with a dark psychological profile, he’s a loner never needing to rely on anyone but himself. Whilst on nightshift he and his partner are called to a shootout where they’re needed to treat a beautiful female shot multiple times. In the ambulance her heart fails her, but Adrian is determined to save her, shocking her heart back into life, they make it to hospital with her still alive. Drawn to her he keeps checking on her to see if she’s recovering, until the fateful night he meets her in the hospital car park dressed in only a hospital gown. Against his better judgement he takes her home and the rollercoaster begins.

A vampire with no memory is a great twist to the beginning of the book, and we are able to see their relationship develop as Adrian observes how quickly the vamp heals whilst finding it difficult to comprehend how she heals and why she keeps biting him drawing on his blood. I haven’t read a book for a while where a vamp lives on instinct alone not knowing why she does things. I also liked that the main vampire in this book is female who instinctually takes a male blood slave who can care and protect her.

It’s not long before the mafia starts raising its ugly head, along with the local white supremacy biker group and a dirty cop. Travis once again drags us through the seedy under world of drugs and the mafia and uses it to great effect in the book. Adrian fights hard against his natural instinct to destroy anything in his path he didn’t want to be the sociopath the army psychiatrists labelled him, that’s why he became an EMT but the need to protect the vamp draws the ruthless side from him.

As is usual in The Nightlife books there’s lots of hot steamy sexual encounters, the tension between the two of them is gripping and intense with the continuous temptation in her mind to bite him while he has an inability to hold back or to play it safe. Travis writes in his own inimitable style giving the reader enough information for them to finish the scenes in their mind and isn’t gratuitous in any way. I must admit I really like Travis’s style of writing erotica in to his books it makes a change from some of the books I’ve read where there’s just lots and lots of sex not always written well.

There is some irony with Adrian and La Rena’s relationship, he’s a sociopathic loner with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) relying on no one and the first women he really falls for is also a tough sociopath & a high ranking drug lord and can be quite messy when she feeds, what were the chances of that Travis!! I also liked Crenshaw who came across as a very funny character although it was a shame about his ending.

The book is gritty and takes you into the world where the mafia is king, law and ruler mix this in with vampires and you get a great Travis Luedke novel. It’s an easy book to read, there’s no need to concentrate too hard to follow the plot, and it allows you to travel into a different world with different laws. It’s a great standalone book within the series and you could read it at any point in the Nightlife book series. I’m sad to reach the end of these books, but I would highly recommend them to anyone who loves a good vampire book or as a first set of books for those just coming into the vampire/fantasy genre
 

I Rate This Book                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                   

 

I Rate This Series

 

 

The Nightlife; San Antonio by Travis Luedke

Now reading the final book in The Nighlife series

Synopsis
Chock-full of vampires, mafia & mayhem, this wicked blend of dark romance and paranormal fantasy from New York Times and USA Today bestseller Travis Luedke is an indulgent sinful pleasure.

The Nightlife is violent, sexy, and occasionally violently sexy, and San Antonio starts with blood on the floor.

EMT on call, Adrian Faulkner resuscitates a beautiful woman after a Mexican mafia shootout. He can't explain why he picks her up in the hospital parking lot three days later and then ducks the San Antonio police – and the Feds.

She needed to hide. With no memory of even her name, she didn't know from who. She only knew she wasn't safe. Lucky to survive, all she wants is to escape the police.

Looking to hit it and quit it, all Adrian wants is to get laid. They both got more than they bargained for.

The naked woman tangled in Adrian’s sheets and his life is far more than a damsel in distress, and now he’s stuck with her. All hell breaks loose as the past she can’t remember catches up with them both…

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