Fangs for Nothing, by Steffanie Holmes.
Lord Alaric Valerian
has a problem: his imperious mother is
coming to visit his castle and will be appalled
at the mess his various artistic endeavours have created; his butler Reginald advises him to employ for
a short time one of those 21st
century ‘unclutterers’ who managed to ruthlessly weed out what one doesn’t need
and tastefully display what one does.
The only snag with that plan is that Lord Alaric has been a vampire for
several hundred years – he sleeps during the day and stays awake all
night. He literally cannot stand
sunlight; it’s liable to burn him to a very unattractive frazzle, so working
with the human Unclutterer will present myriad different problems – but none so
dire as his mother’s reaction to his hoarding addiction: she wants to hold a ball at the castle,
inviting all the others of their kind (their numbers are higher than you would
think, in fact one vampire property entrepreneur has started developing a very
exclusive enclave in the village adjoining Alaric’s castle) and her rage would
be incendiary if she saw it buried in all his clutter.
So. A human Unclutterer it is. Enter Winifred Preston, Unclutterer Supreme,
with the scars to prove it: her mother
is a Hoarder with a PHD in rubbish;
consequently, Winnie is obsessively neat and a champion at discarding
that which is unnecessary to one’s immediate environment: she’s the girl for the job, alright – until
she meets her future boss unexpectedly and in awkward circumstances, as he
chivalrously helps her ward off a creep at the local pub: a kiss is exchanged and the groundwork is
laid for Red Hot Romance.
Well, of course it is! This is a Cozy Vampire Romance, after all,
but what fun it is keeping up with all the great characters, especially the
Nevermore Book Club et al, a group of ladies whom Winnie befriends as much to
find out info about her new employer (who keeps very odd hours!) as to make new
friends. It takes Winnie some time before
she realises what kind of unique person Alaric actually is, and by that time
she is totally enamoured of him (he’s not just astoundingly handsome; he also has a heart of gold – and a sense of
humour!) She can’t go wrong. Except that his mum doesn’t like her and
there have been several attacks on the locals lately, causing much fear and
concern: are they random one-offs, or is
there a serial killer operating in the village?
No-one is any the wiser
at story’s end, so all Ms Holmes’s fans (and they are legion) are fervently
hoping there will be a book two – the sooner the better – especially as Ms
Holmes is a great successor to all the Vampire authors who came before her -
and she’s very, very funny. And don’t we
need fun to distract us in our reading these days! FIVE STARS.
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