Blood Slave (The Nightlife Series) by Travis Leudke – 5 stars
Her mother named her Esperanza Salvación – Hope for Salvation. But when a girl works as an escort for Colombian cartel in the ghettos of Spanish Harlem…
…there wasn’t much hope, or salvation.
Hope’s telepathic ability keeps her a step ahead of ruin, but her unusual gift attracts the attention of a psychotic vampire bitch. Trapped in a Manhattan penthouse with the psycho, she thought she was dead meat.
Her survival lies in the hands of Vampire Master Enrique. He seems to respect her, perhaps even care. As a measure of protection, he makes her his personal Bloodslave. Helplessly addicted to his bite, Enrique rules her every moment. As always, Hope must adapt to survive.
Swept into the decadent nightlife of Manhattan’s elite, she falls in love with Enrique and prays someday he may grow to love her, too. But is it simply a relationship of convenience? Is she nothing more than a concubine desperate to satisfy his nightly demands for blood and sex?
And forever in the background is the fear that one day the cartel boss she abandoned will hunt her down to collect on old debts.
This book contains a significant amount of explicit sex and a few scenes of rape and torture. I have no problem with such things, and found it all to be really well done. Putting the book down was a challenge, and I kept returning to it when I should have been doing other things.
The narrator, Hope, is well done. She’s brave, a survivor, and has a great voice. The author made me care about what happened to her, which is the grandest compliment I can think of to offer. Her history is completely believable, and so long as you can accept vampires, the entire book is, too.
It never stumbled over itself, and exposition was woven in so deftly I barely noticed. I recommend this book to anyone who can accept vampires and isn’t turned off by erotica and violence.
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