The Undead Next Door

The Undead Next Door was another solid read in the Love at Stake series. The entire series thus far contains just the right mix of emotional romance, depth of characters, LOL humor, and exciting adventure to keep me turning the pages and eager for more each time I finish a book. This particular novel also had an inspiring theme of conquering your fears right when I needed it the most. The romance is both sweet and sexy, and there is just enough action to keep the reader on their toes. I loved the characters, and the mind control Jean-Luc used on Heather's no-good ex-husband had me cracking up throughout. Overall, The Undead Next Door was quite simply a lot of fun to read.

Mmmmm, Jean-Luc is soooo sexy! He may be a French fashion show more designer, but he's definitely no sissy, even though the red-neck men in Heather's small town seem to think so and challenge him at every turn. He's a centuries-old vampire who lost two women he loved to his arch-enemy, Lui, who is out to get him yet again. After losing his second love, Jean-Luc has generally avoided women except for sustenance, and ever since Roman invented synthetic blood, he's stayed far away from them. After meeting Heather, he can no longer resist. She is everything he's ever wanted in a woman and more. He would literally give his own life to protect her and and her daughter, Bethany, from harm when it becomes clear that Lui has put them on his hit list. Jean-Luc is an old-fashioned, honorable man who longs for a family of his own and can't help fantasizing about having that life with Heather and Bethany. Jean-Luc treats Heather like a precious jewel, and the things he does for Bethany are utterly sweet. He's very much the embodiment of the perfect balance between strong alpha protectiveness and gentle tenderness, and I couldn't help but fall for him.

Heather is an excellent, loving mother who is kind, caring and compassionate toward others. She is recently divorced from an extremely controlling ex, who told her everything she could and couldn't do, right down to what clothes she could wear. She loves designing and sewing her own clothes, but can't help feeling like they pale in comparison to Jean-Luc's. She's also fuller-figured. It was very sweet how Jean-Luc always tried to reassure Heather that she was beautiful in his eyes and how he respected her talents enough to offer her a job designing clothes for women like herself, rather than the stick-thin models who worked for him. Since divorcing her ex, Heather is trying to be an independent woman and doesn't want to rely on a man for anything, not even one as sexy and charming as Jean-Luc. She has to find a balance between her newfound independence and listening to Jean-Luc in order to stay alive, and I think she did an admirable job of it. She was also pretty smart to figure out part of Jean-Luc's secret before he revealed it to her, so by then, she was already halfway to accepting him as he was. I also very much admired Heather for her “war against fear” and how she was trying not to allow it to get the best of her no matter what.

I absolutely love the multinational cast of characters in the Love at Stake series. Oddly enough, I don't have any trouble imagining all their different accents in my head. In my mind, this is a testament to Kerrlyn Sparks writing skill that she is able to imbue each one with their own distinct personality and dialect. Of course, readers get a visit from Roman and Shanna (How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire) and get to see their growing family, as well as Angus and Emma (Be Still My Vampire Heart). Other common characters who played roles in this book and will get books of their own later in the series: Jean-Luc's guard and Angus' descendant, Robby (The Vampire and the Virgin); Roman's happy-go-lucky right hand man, Gregori (Sexiest Vampire Alive); the boyish kilted Highland guard, Ian (All I Want for Christmas Is a Vampire), who gets a bit of a “make-over” in this book; Phineas (Wanted: Undead or Alive), the new African-American guard who is always good for a laugh; Phil (Forbidden Nights with a Vampire), the mortal day-time guard who has an interesting secret revealed in this story; and last but not least, a cameo from, Giacomo (Secret Life of a Vampire), the suave Italian Casanova. The main villain in this story is the evil Lui, an assassin who's had it in for Jean-Luc for centuries and is now in league with the equally evil Casimir who wants to take over the world. Lui also manages to use his vampire mind control to take over a couple of other characters and make them do bad things as well. Probably the best secondary character in the story, though, was Heather's Latina, psychic, gun-toting nanny, Fidelia, who was an absolute hoot.

Overall, The Undead Next Door was another great read from the imaginative mind of the talented Kerrelyn Sparks. She never fails to keep me engaged when reading her books, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing with the series soon. I adore Ian and have been waiting for his book for a while now, so I'm very excited that it's next up. show less

I really liked this one. I like the fact that the lead male is attracted to someone who isn't pencil thin and drop dead gorgeous. I also like the family dynamic that's present from the start of the relationship. An ages old nemesis adds drama to the story. And I found the treatment of the ex to be pure comedy. Interesting little twist to our friend Phil...I started suspecting it about midway through the book. I'm curious to see if we continue to read about Billy and Sasha in future books.

I wasn't sure if I was all that wild about Jean-Luc from the previous stories, but now he's one of my favorite "good vamps" in the series. Heather, a single mother, was the perfect match for him and I got a kick out of her wild Texas ways. Jean-Luc's tender interaction with her daughter won me over.

I read this series when I need a heavy dose of cheezy. The humor in this one was fantastic. I feared after Angus's story that the series was taking a darker turn. (I liked it, but I missed that witty spark when things got serious). This delivered and I'll never look at a cockroach the same way...er...not that they're allowed in my house or anything. Let's face it. What ex-wife wouldn't want their vamp-boyfriend to put that kind of whammy on show more their ex? Even if it was just once...

Another great installment to the series and a fun read! show less

Book #4
The list of reasons why Heather Westfield would never date famous fashion designer Jean-Luc Echarpe;
#1 Stubborn as a mule
#2 Over Inflated Ego
#3 Overbearing
#4 Too Handsome
#5 Ambiguity
She has just gone through a nasty divorce from a man who was controlling and overbearing. Fear ruled her life until she decided that she was at war with fear and made the decision to divorce her husband and live her life to the fullest even though her small town is anything but exciting. She’s a history teacher at the local high school but has always wanted to be a fashion designer. She attends the grand opening of Jean-Luc Echarpe’s new store.
Heather loves the designs of the dresses on display but they are made for anorexic models and would be show more way too revealing for someone who is a size 12 like herself so she decides to make some changes to the design. She gets out her sketch pad and starts drawing.
Jean-Luc Echarpe who is a vampire is going into exile for a long while because people are beginning to be suspicious of why he has not aged. He plans on reappearing after 20 or 25 years as his son. He has opened this new store in a remote area of Texas with plans to make it fail and then use the building as his hide-out. He is peeking out over the crowd of people who have shown up for his grand opening when he spots Heather sketching and he thinks she is stealing his designs. My thought while reading this was, “Yeah, because it would be so much less sneaky to just snap a picture of the dress with a cell phone.”
He escorts her to the back room and confronts her. They end up flirting and he offers her a short term job but then a mad man shows up and tries to kill Jean-Luc with a sword. Heather, who is at war with fear, grabs some belts and whips the mad man with them. Because some of the belts are made of silver, the silver burns the mad man who she later learns is named Lui and she saves Jean-Luc from being murdered. Lui believes that Heather and Jean-Luc are lovers and tells Jean-Luc that he will kill Heather like he killed his other girlfriends. Jean-Luc then explains to Heather that he will have to protect her now. She tells him she can protect herself at first because she doesn’t want a man guarding her and her four year-old little girl but reluctantly accepts help because he agrees to send a woman to guard her.
This is where the believability of the situation went haywire for me. Heather is a down-to-earth smart woman. She witnesses a man trying to kill another man and is told that he has killed at least two other women yet she does not call the police and lets these strangers take over her life but after meeting the sheriff of the town, I understood her decision. When she looks up some of the aliases that Jean-Luc told her Lui went by in the past, she discovers the names were attached to villains from centuries past. She starts to think that Jean-Luc and his friends might be immortal like from the show Highlander.
Not once in the following days does she think they may be vampires which I really don’t get because of all the hype about vampires in movies, shows and books lately. Jean-Luc always disappears before dawn and only reappears after dark.
Heather and Jean-Luc start to get along great and she basically forgets about the list of reasons why she didn’t like him. He is great with her little girl, Bethany and goes out of his way to please Heather.
I really liked her gun toting, psychic live-in babysitter, Fidelia. She cracked me up especially when Jean-Luc caught her looking up one of the Scottish men’s kilts.
It was a pretty good story but I think it has been my least favorite of all, not because I didn’t connect with Heather. I did. In fact, I have a lot in common with her. I like to design and sew my own clothes just like her because anything over a size 9 in clothes is made like a tent or has hideous gigantic flower prints all over the fabric. I liked Jean-Luc also but I’m not usually attracted to French men because they seem too effeminate to me. I know. That is being prejudice but the movies always portray French men as slender and snobby wearing ruffled shirts and white wigs. I kept trying to get that out of my head while reading this book.
Some of the side stories that were happening were exciting but I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t list them here.
As usual, Kerrelyn Sparks had me cracking up throughout the entire book. The small town Texan characters were hilarious. I was rolling when the coach brought cheerleaders to a high fashion runway show. The author just knows where to tickle me. I’ve already started on the 5th book, All I want for Christmas is a Vampire.
www.paranormalromanceslut.com show less

: snark-fest, shifters, vampire, humor, paranormal, romance, urban-fantasy

Poor vampire, he has to reinvent himself once again because the humans are beginning to notice that the famous haute couture fashion designer never ages. So he thinks to hide away in a basement in a small Texas town. More fool, he!
Nice single mom schoolteacher with a manure-for-brains ex-husband, and a gun-toting live-in senior who babysits for her, just wants to be left alone and wishes that she could afford to make elegant clothing at reasonable prices for REAL women.
At first he thinks that her drawings of his designer line means that she is a spy from another fashion house, but soon realizes that she has loads of talent, no money, and her only threat to him is show more that he comes to care too much for her.
And then there are the villains. And the crazy situations. And some scary stuff.
Kerrelyn Sparks has the most devious, fun imagination! show less

In a word: fun. There's witty dialogue, good chemistry between characters, and enough wackiness to keep things lively. The book is about Heather, a single mother full of stifled dreams, and Jean, a vampire fashion designer who must hide his true nature from the world. Circumstances and an old enemy bring these two together, and they must contend with both extraordinary events and mundane life. Sparks creates a nicely superpowered breed of vampire, though her vamps are not too distinct from other authors' versions. Where Sparks stands out from her brethren is in how she successfully portrays supernatural beings' struggles with everyday living. However, the larger plot was dissatisfying and took a backseat to the smaller events leading up show more to the climax. As for the climax, itself, it was, well... anticlimactic. Towards the end of the book the pace picks up suddenly, even jarringly. There are a few pages of crisis, then -- poof! -- bad guy defeated. And I felt that, in switching between Heather and Jean's perspectives, there were some gaps in the narrative flow. Nevertheless, this was an entertaining book with a Lynsay Sands-esque flair. show less

Opening Sentence: '…Heather Lynn Westfield was in hog heaven…’

I am really enjoying this series and have the next book lined up ready to go :)

Heather is a single mum, with a mean and selfish ex-husband who lives in the same small Texan town. Instead of pursuing her ambition to be a fashion designer, she becomes a local school teacher in order to keep her mother happy. When the world famous designer, Jean-Luc, opens up a boutique in the small town, Heather goes along to check out the fashions. Jean-Luc thinks she is stealing his designs when he sees her drawing at the opening night. But when he realises that she is merely 'improving' his designs for women of a realistic size, he is impressed and offers her a job.

What Heather doesn't show more realise is that Jean-Luc is a vampire - a really attractive, sexy vampire. She accepts his job offer and gets drawn into his world - a world where her life is in danger for being associated with him. Will the fact that he is a vampire make a difference?

The Undead Next Door is a funny, sexy and action-filled romance and I fell in love with the quirky housekeeper - psychic, and gun-toting Fedelia. I do hope she returns in future books - she deserves a man of her own. show less