Graham Fitz Clare became a vampire to save his adoptive father from a deadly enemy. Sadly, the price of that rescue may have been too high. Edmund’s captors are at large again, and are amassing the sort of power that could make them unstoppable. In the end, the love the Fitz Clares share with each other could be all that stands between them and a desperate storm of destruction.

This book pretty much continues where the last book, Breaking Midnight, left off. It’s 3 months later and the Fitz Clare family has moved to the family home Bridesmere. Edmund has blocked Estelle from his mind and the bond they once shared is slowly slipping away. Edmund is scared that Estelle won’t love him any longer if she see’s what’s in his mind.

Pen, who is in love with Graham and helped out in the last book, has gone to South Carolina to take over the home there since her mother has died. While there the evil upyr, Frank and Li-Hua, attack her. Her “boss” comes to her rescue and saves her. When the Fitz Clare family finds out about the attack they (except Edmund and Estelle) head to the Carolina’s to track and take down the evil ones.

When Pen and Graham are together again they immediately continue their sexual relationship but when Graham realizes that what he’s feeling for Pen is love he tries courting her rather than ravishing her. The problem is that the way Graham starts phrasing things to Pen she’s thinking he just wants to be friends. It makes for an interesting relationship.

This third story in the Fitz Clare Chronicles was a good one. When the whole family took off for the Carolina’s I didn’t get the feeling, like I did in the second book, that their participation was unnecessary. I was closer to the characters than I had been in the second book and could see that each one had their place in the story and in the final events with the villains.

This book also brought to light exactly what Pen’s “job” was. It was a secret no-named agency that was investigating the existence of upyrs. Though I was happy for this information (as I was wondering about it in the second book) I didn’t felt that it added too much to the story. Yes, it gave Pen some good fighting skills but that was about it.

Overall I think this was a good conclusion to the storyline from the last few books. There was a little bit more romance in this one which was nice – since I’m a romance junkie – and of course Emma Holly always has the rockin’ hot sex scenes.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5