Title: Redemption
Author: Susannah Sandlin
Release Date: June 12th, 2012
Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance
The world’s vampire population is on the brink of starvation since the vaccine to treat a global pandemic rendered human blood deadly to them. Their only hope for survival is a handful of rural areas that the vaccine never breached.
The tiny town of Penton, Alabama, is one such enclave, where the immortal Aidan Murphy has established a community of vampires and their willingly bonded humans. Together, they live in peace—until Aidan’s estranged brother descends upon the town and begins attacking its humans. Whether the rampage is a result of his centuries-old feud with Aidan or the civil war threatening to erupt in the vampire world matters not. All that matters is the blood.
Desperate to save his adopted family, Aidan breaks one of his cardinal rules, kidnapping an unvaccinated human doctor—and unexpectedly falling in love for the first time in nearly four hundred years.
Sensual and thrilling, Redemption is the first installment of what is sure to be a darkly addictive new series from paranormal romance novelist Susannah Sandlin.
Summary from Goodreads.com
My Review: Redemption contains a world of vampires with a couple of new twists on the mythology. They are in the middle of a pandemic and are in danger of starving. Apparently there is a virus sweeping through the humans and the vaccine to this virus is poisonous to vampires. So anyone injected with the vaccine cannot give blood to vampires. There are also numerous vampires that are bonded to humans and those humans are under their protection. Another benefit of being bonded is that the humans cannot be fed on by other vampires other than their bonded vampire. So they are basically set for life with any personal needs they might have. Vampires also feed from humans they call familiars. Familiars are humans they are bonded to. Those humans are not necessarily single. Some are married to other humans or familiars. It took a little while for me to wrap my brain around being married to one person but letting someone else feed from you. Especially since feeding is very intimate in this world. I had to adapt to the way this world worked since I was not used to it. It was not good or bad, just different.
Before I talk about the romance in Redemption I do need to address one issue I had. I did not like Aiden enthralling Krys numerous times towards the beginning of the book. I get why he thought he needed to kidnap her so she could help out his people and that could be forgiven in time, but enthralling her like he did repeatedly just did not sit right with me. I also did not like that Krys did not really react negatively to this at all. Once she woke up from the spells she was pretty much over it. I know if that happened to me I would be pissed off and I wanted to see more of that from Krys. Especially considering her past and how her father treated her, I was surprised she let the enthralling slide so easily.
Alright, so now the romance. Once I got past the enthralling issue I really did like Aiden. He has not been dealt an easy hand and he is trying to protect his people the best way that he can. He knows what he is doing with Krys is not very ethical, but he is desperate to save his people and she seems to be his only option at the moment. Once the two of them actually starting spending some real time together I did feel their connection. They are both lost and needed someone else to be there to help them find out who they really are. They are also both very afraid of divulging their true feelings and jumping into a relationship that might not work out. I was genuinely rooting for them in the end, and kept fingers crossed that they could work past their trust issues and just be together.
The villain in Redemption was fantastic! It actually turned out to be Aiden’s brother, Owen, which just made it all the more personal and vicious. He was ruthless, cruel and Susannah did a fantastic job of making him a huge threat to Aiden’s world. Paranormal romance novels need a great villain to spur the action forward and Owen fit the bill perfectly. I was shocked by some of his behavior and some of it was even hard to read at points, but he is the villain and his behavior made it very easy to hate him.
Overall, I did enjoy this world and while I was not wowed by the book, I did finish it all in one day. I am intrigued enough by Redemption to know that I will read future books when they are released. I am just hoping the enthralling will be kept to a minimum in future titles. I suggest checking out other reviews of this book and maybe read a chapter or two to see what you think before picking it up yourself.
FTC: I received this ARC through the Amazon Vine program.
