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Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating: 3.5 stars
Pages: 357
Summary: Ten months after vampires revealed their existence to the mortals of Chicago, they're enjoying a celebrity status usually reserved for the Hollywood elite. But should people learn about the Raves-mass feeding parties where vampires round up humans like cattle-the citizens will start sharpening their stakes.
So now it's up to the new vampire Merit to reconnect with her upper class family and act as liaison between humans and bloodsuckers, and keep the more unsavory aspects of the vampire lifestyle out of the media. But someone doesn't want peace between them-someone with an ancient grudge...
Thoughts: That I love Chloe Neill is not much of a secret. Her YA debut Firespell made my Top Ten of 2010, and the first in her UF series, Some Girls Bite, made me long for Merit's BFF and her asshole-Mr. Darcy. Friday Night Bites is a solid sequel to the aforementioned UF book, but not as good as her other works.
Friday Night Bites really deals with Merit accepting her new position in the vampiric world - she makes decisions based on what the responsible vampire action would be and it's all very grown-up. But Merit starts to change in this book, and while it is not a bad change, we start to worry (and as does she) that she might lose herself to her new job. As someone who does that all the time, that really struck a chord with me. When does the responsible move become the move that suppresses your true nature? Great stuff.
I also liked how Merit's relationships developed in this book - some for better, some for worse. It wasn't what had changed that I liked, but how Neill went about the change. We all lose touch with people we love and we all find unexpected relationships. There doesn't have to be a death or a betrayal to spark a dramatic change... time does that all on its own.
Unfortunately the action left quite a bit to be desired. Even though I have never read Neill for her action-packed baddies, in Friday Night Bites she dropped the ball. The evil!plot was rather coincidental, and a few of the non-central characters behaved like plot devices. I know it's hard for series writers to come up with Big. Events. for every book, but this one was particularly poor. I really wish I could give more explicit details - because there are a couple that made me really roll my eyes - but I don't want to spoil all of you who are expecting fab stuff.
Bottom line? Fabulous writer, great characters, great series - but just an OK novel. I am hoping for bigger and better things from Neill in her next books!
Well maybe the next one will work better for you! I really enjoy her supporting characters:)
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