Guest Review: Smolder by Melina Morel

Tracy’s review of Smolder by Melina Morel

Vengeance has its price. But you pay for passion forever…

Descended from werewolf hunters, Catherine Marais has vanquished countless of their vile kind-including the one that slaughtered her father. Her debt of blood and honor was fulfilled-but her heart is empty.

The only one who ignites Catherine’s passion is Ian-a handsome, elegant vampire whose seductive touch she cannot resist. But when he offers her the dark temptation of eternal commitment to each other, Catherine must look within her heart-and her truest desires-to find the answers she seeks…

When I first started this book I was totally confused. Catherine and her partner Paul were killing werewolves – apparently the vilest of creatures – but yet Catherine was having a love affair with Ian, a vampire. Ok, vamps good…werewolves bad. But why? Then the vamp’s houseman comes clean that he’s a werecat – and apparently that’s ok too. But why? We do find out why werewolves are bad and the others are ok but not until about 30 pages later and only then with a one sentence explanation. I have to say I was greatly confused by the first part of this book. Clearly I needed to read Devour, Morel’s last novel, in order to have a clue as to what was going on at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately I hadn’t.

Despite that lack I managed to get through the book. The story encompasses so much more than what is described in the blurb that it’s almost difficult to tell you the basics. Catherine and Ian are lovers and love each other deeply. (At least I think they do – they can’t seem to live without the other but when they’re together all they do is have sex. To me there’s a heck of a lot more involved in love and a HEA.) The request from Ian to Catherine to make her a vamp is in there too, but it’s not the biggest part of the book, by far. Then there is Catherine’s 16 year old niece, Solange, who has a mighty crush on a boy, Luc, who is 2 years her senior. Solange has been sheltered her whole life and the family is worried that she’ll do something drastic. When Ian’s houseman finds out that Luc is actually a werewolf that makes things even crazier. But Luc isn’t what anyone expects. Then there’s the sketch that the werewolves have of Catherine and they basically have a hit out on her. Of course we add in Paul and his wife wishing to have a baby but are scared to. I had no idea why they had this fear until later when it’s explained that they might have a werewolf baby because of previous werewolf descendants. This was odd since in another part of the book an Alpha werewolf says that only 2 were’s can have a were baby…and Paul and his wife are both human. Then there’s the human clone that’s made. Are you overwhelmed yet? I was. And we won’t even get into the entire cast of characters that I had to keep straight. Wow.

But it wasn’t just overwhelming to the point of are you kidding me? It was more that even though there was a ton going on in the book I didn’t feel emotional about anyone – which was just disappointing. Was this because I hadn’t met these characters in the previous book? Could be, I’m not sure, but I felt like I was coming into a story already in progress and couldn’t quite invest myself fully in the book. I have to say that I was rooting for Luc and Solange more than anything but even that wasn’t fully realized.

Unfortunately this wasn’t a book that worked for me.

Rating: 2 out of 5

This book is available from Signet Eclipse. You can buy it here.