A Mate for Gideon: The Program, Book 2 by Charlene Hartnady

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Have you ever wanted to date a vampire? Human women required. Must be enthusiastic about interactions with vampires. Must be willing to undergo a stringent medical exam. Must be prepared to sign a contractual agreement which would include a non-disclosure clause. Limited positions available….

Jenna has a few skeletons in her closet. One of which is tall, dark, and gorgeous. He also happens to be a vampire with a grudge against her. She’s made mistakes and has done things she’s not proud of. The time has come to take charge of her life. The opportunity to do just that comes along in the form of an acceptance into the infamous vampire program.

Would she like to date a vampire?

Hell yes! But not just any vampire, her vampire. That is, if he’ll ever forgive her. With such a dark past, she worries whether she’ll ever be able to confront him and, in so doing, bare her soul to him. It would kill her to see the disgust and contempt in his eyes when he finds out…her heart clenches and her eyes mist at the thought. Gideon is almost brought to his knees when he realizes that Jenna is one of the females that’s taking part in the dating program.

His Jenna.

No! Not his. Not anymore.

What the hell is she doing here? With all he knows about her, there’s no way that she was able to meet all the minimum criteria required for acceptance. Not a damned chance! He’s not interested in her…or any human female for that matter. That said, he also refuses to just stand by and watch her get seduced by one of the victorious 10, elite males. His only option is to find a way to expose her as the deceptive female that she is.

A Mate for Gideon

The Vampire Who Couldn’t Let Her Go

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💚
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎
Character development: 😋😉😎
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

Characters and Plot Summary

I went into A Mate for Gideon already curious about Gideon because of the hints about his secret history in the first book, and his story ended up being much more emotional than I expected. Gideon is a vampire who had a brief relationship with Jenna eighteen months earlier, but their relationship ended painfully. When he discovers that Jenna is now one of the human women participating in the Program, his reaction is immediate outrage. He insists she could not possibly have qualified honestly and becomes determined to expose her rather than admit that he still wants her.

Jenna, meanwhile, has deliberately entered the Program because she wants another chance with Gideon. Her biggest obstacle is the past she is carrying and her fear that Gideon will despise her once he learns the whole truth. I especially liked that her motivation wasn’t simply “I want a vampire.” She specifically wants him, even though she knows reconnecting with him could mean confronting everything that caused their first relationship to fall apart. Gideon’s jealousy becomes increasingly obvious as he watches her interact with the other vampires, even while he insists he wants nothing to do with the Program. Watching him try to convince himself that he doesn’t care while simultaneously trying to keep Jenna away from the other males was one of my favorite parts.

Highlights and Limitations

The strongest part of the story for me was the emotional history between Gideon and Jenna. Their separation isn’t treated as a simple misunderstanding that can be cleared up with one conversation. Jenna has genuine reasons for being afraid to tell him what happened, while Gideon makes things worse by judging her before he actually listens. That made his eventual regret feel much more meaningful because he has to confront how badly he handled the situation.

I also enjoyed how the story overlaps with the events of the previous book. The Program isn’t just background decoration, and Gideon’s inability to participate officially creates an interesting problem because he wants Jenna while technically having no claim on her. His attempts to interfere while pretending he is only trying to protect the integrity of the Program gave me several moments where I wanted to tell him to stop being so stubborn and simply talk to her.

My biggest hesitation was the amount of flashback material. I understood why the past was important, but some of those sections slowed the present-day story down for me. One reviewer estimated that a significant portion of the book consists of flashbacks, and I can understand that reaction. I personally would have preferred a little more of Gideon and Jenna dealing with their current situation and slightly less revisiting of what had already happened.

Narration

Lance Greenfield and Amber Black worked particularly well together here. I liked having the male and female perspectives distinguished through the dual narration, and the transition between them never became distracting for me. Interestingly, dual narration is something one listener specifically said they normally dislike yet found effective in this book because the narrators handled the shared characters consistently.

The audiobook runs about 8 hours and 31 minutes, giving the story enough room for the emotional backstory and the romance to develop without feeling excessively long. I thought the narrators captured the difference between Gideon’s controlled, possessive attitude and Jenna’s more vulnerable perspective especially well. Their performances helped sell the tension between two people who clearly still have feelings for each other but are both carrying too much baggage to simply admit it.

Final Thoughts

I ended up enjoying A Mate for Gideon more for the characters than for the actual predictability of the plot. I could see where the romance was heading, but I still cared about whether Gideon and Jenna would finally stop hurting each other long enough to have an honest conversation. Gideon’s stubborn jealousy and Jenna’s fear of revealing her past created enough emotional tension to keep me listening.

What surprised me most was how much sympathy I ultimately had for both of them. Gideon certainly frustrated me with his assumptions and his determination to get Jenna disqualified but seeing him realize that he had judged her too quickly made a difference. Jenna also won me over because she wasn’t simply waiting around for Gideon to rescue her. She made the decision to enter the Program because she wanted to take control of her life and face the man she still loved.

I would recommend this audiobook to paranormal romance listeners who enjoy possessive vampire heroes, second-chance romance, complicated secrets, and a relationship that has to be rebuilt rather than instantly repaired. It works as a standalone, although I think reading A Mate for York first makes Gideon’s story more satisfying because of how closely the books overlap.

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