Fangs for the Memories (2005)

Fangs for the Memories was pretty good. It's well written, and I like the way that Love imagines vampires. She gives them incredibly keen senses of smell - so keen that they can recognize individual odors at a distance and scent feelings and thoughts. They can taste them, too - a good person's blood is sweet, an evil person's blood is stale and sour.

Rhys is a pretty appealing character. He's the kind of guy you'd be an idiot not to love - a caretaker personality, serious, responsible, faithful, devoted, good. The hook is that in the two hundred years since he became a vampire, he hasn't gotten over the "Woe is me! I am an evil creature of the night! Woe, woe!" stage of coping. He avoids normal, good people at all costs. Which is why he gets amnesia. Once he forgets he's a vampire, he is free to lay his heart at the feet of lovely Jane.

Jane is fairly delightful - and, as Rhys' brother Sebastian notes several times - perfect for Rhys. Why? Because she, too, is a goody two shoes. She, too, is painfully moral and devoted to her family. She's very young and innocent but has a backbone.

Sebastian, by the way, is almost the best part of the book - lighthearted and funny and perfect comic relief.

There are a number of obstacles to overcome on the road to bliss. The obvious one is that Rhys needs to get over his amnesia, hopefully without deciding that he has to abandon Jane for her own good. Another is that Christian, the third brother, is trying to kill Jane. The third is that Jane is going to figure out eventually that the man she's fallen in love with is a vampire, and that she finds it really erotic when he sucks her blood.

It's a good read, and a nice mid-point between fluffy vampire books where the vampires are just normal people with fangs and an insecurity complex, and broody vampire books where vampires are tormented, soulless, vicious creatures of the night. ( )

Heck of a lot of sex. But what else can you do when the majority of the book takes place in an apartment. I got a bit bored with this one, but stayed with it till the end! ( )

There are Christmas mornings and then there are Christmas mornings like this one: watching my brother, Rhys, swagger through our New York City apartment...smiling. We are talking about Rhys, the detached, surly and annoying; the man who turned brooding into an art form. But he's not brooding now. No, he's practically threatening to pistol whip me for shaking hands with the beautiful, sweet, half-dressed creature named Jane who just tried to sneak out of his bedroom, Weird. And who knew Brother Grim even had a sex drive? But it isn't just the smiling and the sudden libido that has me freaked out. Something terrible happened last night, something that made my brother break his own rule and save the life of a mortal. Whatever it was, now he doesn't remember anything from the past two hundred years. He wants Jane so bad that he's forcing himself to forget he's a vampire, taking himself back to a time before he crossed over and our family was destroyed. He's sauntering around the place like a Regency viscount with an English accent, saying things like "I behaved like a randy, soused caper-wit." Did we ever really talk like that? So, Rhys doesn't know he's a vampire, and neither does Jane. This is what we call a problem. ( )

I have seen Kathy Love's "Fangs" books around the blogs but, I must admit, I avoided them because of the silly titles. The other day I picked up Fangs for the Memories off our book swap shelf at work because I had forgotten my current read.

I was hooked from the first page- which is saying something because though I love paranormal romance, I'm usually not a big fan of the vamp/chick lit hook.

This story starts out with Jane, our shy but determined heroine stopping at a seedy little bar in NYC after a rough first day in the big city. While there she encounters some dubious characters, including our hero- Rhys, a vampire who naturally is tired of drain of being a vampire. (pun intended). But rather than picking up on him to soothe her battered nerves, she turns to another and finds herself attacked in a dark ally after they leave the bar together.

Rhys knows he should leave the attractive but decidedly innocent girl alone to her own foolishness, but his character demands he step in. He rescues her and walks her home safe and sound and that, as they say, is the end of that. (Oh he wants her, but he knows he can't have such a pure soul as this fetching young lady.) So he goes back to find the creep who attacked her to finish him off- and perhaps get alittle feeding in too.

But Jane has realized she's lost a precious memento during her struggle with the creep and when she returns to the scene of the crime she finds someone other than the creep has overcome Rhys.

The stranger, who is in fact NOT a stranger but Rhys's embittered brother Christian, puts her under a spell too. They awaken later to find his other brother Sebastian standing over them. Rhys also has some serious holes in his memory, chief among them- he thinks it's the time before his turning, the 1800's, and has no memory of being a Vamp.

Sebastian knows something isn't jiving and he senses there is something more to Jane being there, so he brings them back to their home and promptly convinces Jane to stay til his brother's memories return.

You can guess what happens in the meantime. Rhys and Jane fall for each other ... hard ... and she quickly finds herself hopelessly entangled in the web of these three brothers' lives.

Jane is, of course, exactly where she should be, but letting herself remain becomes more difficult when she realizes she is in more danger of a broken heart then the very real physical harm lurking around the corner.

A steamy, sensual read as well as quirky I'm giving this one a 4 out of 5 and I'll be looking for Christian and Sebastian's story as well!! ( )