Darkened Days by C.L. Quinn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jacob had searched for her for two months. 

Taken by rogue vampires, Starla had disappeared without a trace. An innocent, sweet girl from a remote Alaskan town, the human friend of a powerful first blood vampire, she had no idea the vampire world existed. Now, a lead sends him to Paris, to a cadre of young vampires that run the city at night, breaking rules and risking the vampire community’s sacred covenant for secrecy.

When he finds her, she’s been changed. She’s vampire now. He barely recognizes the angry, oversexed girl as the one he’d met briefly and saved just months earlier. It doesn’t help that she turns him on like none of the beautiful experienced vampires he’s always preferred.Paris at night is gorgeous, the city of love, a place to make love and be made love to. But not for Jacob, who wants to save this lost girl, and ends up on the wrong side of justice.Jacob and Starla’s story starts in southern France and ends in South Africa, as a young newly “made” vampire learns how to accept who and what she is now, to understand what may be the greatest gift of her life. To find out that love can come in the most unlikely ways while life happens regardless of choices made. That sometimes destiny really is written in the stars.

This story is beautiful on its own, but continues the series of first blood vampires started in Forbidden Days, also available here on Amazon.com. If you enjoy Starla and Jacob’s story, try the other three books in this series to see where it all began.

Darkened Days

Great characters and a terrific plot!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💚🖤❤️💜🩵
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: ☹️😀😋😘😍

The heroine: Starla – she is the young human woman who worked at the café in Alaska with Eillia from Longest Days. They became good friends, though Eillia never told Starla about being a vampire. After Eillia left Alaska and went home to France, Starla decided that she would also leave the frozen north and traveled to France to meet up with Eillia. When she got to the villa, Eillia was out of the country in Bali with her mate Daniel, so Starla returned to her hotel and later that night was in a horrible car accident.

The Hero: Jacob – he lives with Koen, Eillia, Bas and Park. He is a made vampire that is over 200 years old, and he is the head of security for Bas. He was first introduced in Forbidden Days and is a good man. When the cops turn up at the villa, and inform them that there has been an accident and the young woman that was hit by the car may be dying. Jacob is tasked with going to the hospital to help Eillia’s friend by giving her his blood so that she survives.

The story: Jacob gives Starla his blood, thinking that she will now live. He plans to stay with her till she gets better, but he skipped his meal, so he goes to the hospital cafeteria for some food. Vampires need blood to survive, but they also have a very fast metabolism so need a lot of food as well. While he was gone, a cadre of newbie vampires who continually increase their numbers by capturing and turning young tourists, kidnap Starla from her hospital bed and turn her into a vampire. Jacob returns to find out Starla has been taken and he knows it was done by vampires since the nurse had been compelled to forget. He is determined to find Starla no matter what.

I really enjoyed how this story went. I liked the fact that Starla was basically an innocent when she was turned against her will and by the time Jacob finds her, she is very angry about how she is living, the fact that she wasn’t given any choice, and also about how the guys in the cadre use the females for sex. Jacob is very attracted to Starla, but knows that Eillia, who is a first blood vampire is very fond of Starla, so he feels he shouldn’t hook up with Starla. Not only that, but he doesn’t want to use her like the guys in the cadre did.

I also absolutely loved to be a spectator to Starla’s world travels and to hear about the great pyramids in Egypt, the Sphinx, the Karnak Temple in Luxor, ziplining across Victoria Falls in Zambia, and with each place she visited, I Googled the place and got to see the sights with her, though she got to see them at night and most of the pictures in Google are in daylight, so I also had to use my imagination to see it as she and her traveling companion, Henri did. Another first blood named Ahmose was also introduced in this book.

I was afraid, when I started this series, that the entire series would be about Alvin, the vampire who wanted to end all other vampires and his war against the rest of the vampire race. I was glad to see that though he did appear in the last book, that each book has a different conflict. I kind of hate when a series is all about one overarching conflict. I like each book to be different and have the main characters fighting against different opponents with varying issues. I also love the fact that so many of the characters from previous books show up in each new book. And the settings are all different in each of these books, we have gone from California to Canada, to Colorado, to Alaska, to the south of France, to Paris and now to Egypt, Africa and more.

Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Twitter|BookBub

View all my reviews