Blood Bride by C.D. Reiss

 Blood Bride 

by C.D. Reiss

 My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊⯨

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

The release is on KICKSTARTER and launches on June 13th.

Carmine Montefiore, Mafia Capo and King of Vampires, has everything on the line.
Luna Beneforte has nothing to lose, and she’s the only woman who can save him.

When Luna gets a letter revealing a long lost family in Italy and a life-changing inheritance, she doesn’t hesitate to board a private plane to escape her dead-end life.

But she inadvertently runs directly into the arms of a dead man.

Carmine Montefiore, capo di capo of a secret vampire mafia, was sired five hundred years ago, during the second sack of Rome. But for the last fifty years, his people believed him dead…as any normal vampire would be after getting staked.

But Carmine is far from normal.

Now he’s back to search for a bride. He needs the blood of a Strega witch to restore his power, but they’ve become increasingly rare in the years he’s been gone.

Then he scents Luna...

My Review:

Let me tell you something about the way I sometimes choose my books, because I think it is important context for everything I am about to say. Sometimes I do not read the synopsis. Sometimes I do not research the author or check the ratings or consult my carefully curated reading list. Sometimes I pick up a book because a few words caught my eye, or because the cover was pretty, or because something about it reached out and grabbed me in a way I could not fully explain. That is exactly how Blood Bride by C.D. Reiss came into my life, and I am so extraordinarily glad that it did.

I was not prepared for this book. Not even a little bit. And being unprepared for it made the whole experience that much more electric.

Ancient vampires meets the mafia. Let that sink in for a moment. Those two worlds, each already dripping with power and darkness and danger on their own, colliding together in one story. The combination should not work as well as it does and yet it is absolutely seamless. The atmosphere that C.D. Reiss builds from that premise is thick and intoxicating and pulls you under before you even realize it is happening. It is moody and dangerous and alluring in a way that makes it genuinely difficult to put down.

And then there is the male main character. I need to talk about him because he is something else entirely. There is an allure to him that I cannot fully articulate, which I think is actually the point. He is the kind of character that gets under your skin slowly and then all at once, and by the time you realize how deep in you are it is far too late to do anything about it. Ancient and dangerous and magnetic in that specific way that only the best written vampires ever manage to pull off. I was absolutely captivated.

Now. I need to address the orange. I cannot tell you exactly what happens because that would be robbing you of the experience of discovering it for yourself, and you deserve to have that moment land the way it landed for me. What I can tell you is that there is a scene involving an orange that I was completely unprepared for, and I will never, for the rest of my life, look at an orange the same way again. It has been permanently claimed by this book and I have accepted that. If you know, you know. And if you do not know yet, you will.

The fact that this book surprised me as much as it did is honestly one of the things I love most about it. I went in with no expectations and came out the other side genuinely shaken and delighted and wanting more. That is such a rare and wonderful thing, that feeling of being caught completely off guard by a story that turned out to be so much more than you bargained for.

If dark paranormal romance is your thing, if you love a world that is shadowy and dangerous and soaked in atmosphere, if ancient vampires and the ruthless power of the mafia sound like a combination that was made specifically for your reading tastes, then please do yourself an enormous favor and pick up Deep Thrall. Just be warned. You will never look at fruit the same way again.