Royal Reviews: THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR by Ashlyn Chase

To kickoff Vampire Week here at Royal Reviews we are holding a Sunday Vampire Edition of Weird & Wonderful.

This weeks Weird & Wonderful book is THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR by Ashlyn Chase

Title: The Vampire Next Door
Author: Ashlyn Chase
ISBN: 978-1-4022-3663-1
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
$6.99/£4.99
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Release Date: August 2011
Pages: 384
Genre: Paranormal Romance
How I read it: Mass Market Paperback from publishers
Rating: 3.5

HOW DOES A VIGILANTE VAMPIRE…

Undead Sly just hasn’t been the same since he lost the love of his life many years ago. He devotes his vampiric powers to maintaining a nice safe neighborhood, until a chipped fang undermines his confidence--and leads him to a beautiful witch who awakens Sly’s long-forgotten desires.

HOOK UP WITH A WITCH WHO’S AFRAID OF THE DARK…

The charming Morgaine has spells to cure everyone’s problems but her own. Her intense phobias keep her in her shell, until she gets to know tall, dark, and brooding Sly. Just when these two unlikely lovers think they might find a cure for both of them, their deepest fears are realized, and suddenly they see their last hope for a “normal” life slipping away…

My Review:

Sly is vampire who was created 20-odd years ago by a villainous vampire who murdered his pregnant wife. With his beloved wife dead and daughter having been raised by another family, Sly has turned into a brooding crime fighter. When one of his vigilante sprees goes wrong in the form of a broken fang and silver poisoning, he seeks the aid of Morgaine, a neighboring witch.

Morgaine maybe be a witch with healing powers although she is unable to heal her own phobia’s which have led her to become a shut in. When Sly shows up on her doorstep looking a bit of help, she never imagined that he would be the one helping her.

My Thoughts:

While I did enjoy the characters of Sly and Morgaine, I felt that they fell flat when compared to the secondary characters who were so lively. I also felt that Sly and Morgaine lacked chemistry and the sex scenes felt out of character with the dirty talk. Then we have the important issues of the story, Sly’s maker coming back into his live and Morgaine’s phobias, resolved in an abrupt manner that did not reach its full potential.

Although I do have to say that this was a very enjoyable novel and I found that secondary stories/characters were the ones who shinned in this novel. Morgaine’s cousin, Gwyenth was especially fun to read with her Southern charm.

Steamy, witty, and thoroughly entertaining THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR was a light-hearted, fun read. The is the third book in Ashlyn Chase’s Strange Neighbor series, and while THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR, does read as a stand-alone novel, for me, I feel that I have lost a sense of the story by not reading the previous two.