Meena Harper has a special gift, but it’s only now that anyone’s ever appreciated it. The Palatine Guard – a powerful secret demon-hunting unit of the Vatican – has hired her to work at their new branch in Lower Manhattan. With Meena’s ability to predict how everyone she meets will die, the Palatine finally has a chance against the undead.
Sure, her ex-boyfriend was Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness. But that was before he (and their relationship) went up in flames. Now Meena’s sworn off vampires for good . . . at least until she can prove her theory that just because they’ve lost their souls doesn’t mean demons have lost the ability to love.
Meena knows convincing her co-workers – including her partner, über-demon-hunter Alaric Wulf – that vampires can be redeemed won’t be easy. . . especially when a deadly new threat seems to be endangering not just lives of the Palatine, but Meena’s friends and family as well.
But Meena isn’t the Palatine’s only hope. Father Henrique-aka Padre Caliente- New York City’s youngest, most charming priest, has also been assigned to the case.
So why doesn’t Meena – or Alaric – trust him?
As she begins unraveling the truth, Meena finds her loyalties tested, her true feelings laid bare . . . and temptations she never even imagined existed, but finds impossible to resist.
This time, Meena may finally have bitten off more than she can chew.
From the website of author Meg Cabot
I’ve been bit.
Maybe this is why I avoided reading the Twilight books for so long—because I was afraid it would lead me to reading more Stories about vampires.
Which is exactly what it did.
Well, maybe not exactly. It’s not really fair to blame my latest vampire read on that one popular series. Chances are I would have read this most recent book regardless. I mean, there are some authors whose work I will read, no matter what they write about.
One of those authors is Meg Cabot. Yeah, so I got hooked on her work after seeing The Princess Diaries. I liked the movie enough that I wanted to read the book. Then I liked the book enough that I wanted to read more by Ms. Cabot. Lucky for me, her titles are very well stocked at my local library.
In fact, it was while browsing the NEW ARRIVALS section at the library that I found Overbite, the new (at least one of the new—she seems to release new stuff all the time!) title by Meg Cabot.
Overbite is the sequel to her novel Insatiable. The story follows Meena Harper as she tries to overcome the heartbreak of having loved and lost a vampire.
If I was hoping for the tender love story that I found in previous vampire books, I picked the wrong book.
To be honest, I am not sure what I was expecting. Probably just something to pass the time, something to distract me from the novel that I should be writing but am so frustrated with that I don’t want to work on it. And what could provide a better distraction than something that has nothing at all to do with what I’ve been writing?
I did find Overbite to be really well written. Sure, there were things that annoyed me (I still do not understand why the author had to constantly refer to Lucien Antonescu rather than simply Lucien) but there was nothing so jarring that I wanted to stop reading.
Like I said, this was not a tender love story. This book was much, much darker than I had hoped for. It was much darker than most other books I’ve read. The darkness wasn’t really what bothered me. What I didn’t like about the book was how evil parts of it seemed.
OK, so I guess I shouldn’t expect overpowering goodness from a bunch of vampires. But I was really disturbed by hearing Lucien constantly referred to as the Prince of Darkness. I felt like, as odd as this may sound to others, it was just inviting satan into the book. That made me more uncomfortable than I can fully express.
Yes, this book was nicely written. Meg Cabot knows how to string words together to create a compelling tale. In that way, she didn’t disappoint. The subject matter, though, just wasn’t my cup of tea. This won’t keep me from reading more of Cabot’s work. But I don’t think I will be reading anything else, including any other books in this series, she writes dealing with vampires.
