[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Bacchanalia House in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Winnie has a new gig helping someone who needs a professional organizer. And the timing is perfect, getting her out of London and away from her mom and the memories of Patrick… and Claire.
Alaric’s butler has hired the organizer to help him prepare for a ball his mother insists on holding in his home. The problem is that the organizer is a human. And Alaric is a vampire.
Winnie’s job might be too much for one woman to handle in three weeks. But she’s joining a local book club – The Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven – and they have a murder to solve. And that’s a nice distraction from her childhood trauma, from her ex-fiancé and ex-best friend who are in town, and from the completely inappropriate feelings she is developing for her client.
But instead of distracting her from her boss, she ends up faking a romantic relationship with him – at first to fool Winnie’s ex and then to fool Alaric’s mother – who has shown up with a woman she expects him to marry.
Review
So fun! I immediately fell in love with this – the characters, the world building, the romance, and the mystery. And the story is LONG – I felt like I really got to dig deep with this story. And when I finished the ARC, I immediately bought my own copy and pre-ordered the sequel, A Grave Mistake. Together the books kick off the author’s Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven series, which is a spinoff of an earlier Nevermore Bookshop Mystery series. I haven’t read that series, but plan to try it out. [Sadly for readers, book two has been postponed and pre-orders have been canceled. Happily for the author, she has secured a publishing deal! So book one is being re-released and book two will come out later this year. I guess I will have to re-read Fangs for Nothing while I wait!]
The mystery here – humans drained of blood by a rogue vampire – takes a back seat to the romance, and I was okay with that. (Pieces of the mystery will carry over into book 2.) The romance between two broken people dealing with past trauma was the central focus, and I adored it so much I was a little sad to discover that Winnie and Alaric won’t be the POV characters for the sequel – but only a little sad because the premise for book 2 is fantastic!
I don’t generally love vampire stories – and I definitely don’t seek them out. But this, while also spicier than my usual read, really worked for me. The world building is well done and clever, and the pacing is terrific. I have an aversion to the word “smut,” so I didn’t love it’s use in the book, but it was a small price to pay for the overall experience of this fantastic story. This was the first book in a LONG time that trumped my other hobbies and chores and bedtime and kept me reading any chance I could find until I finished.
Paranormal romance and fantasy fans as well as vampire fans should definitely pick this up. This checks a few of the same boxes as my 2024 find, the Riley Thorne series – the paranormal aspects (vampire here, psychic there) in a romance/mystery combo story. This is quite a bit darker than Riley as well as being more serious and more spicy. But I loved it all the same! (Language, sex. Trigger warning: Hoarding, nightmares, obsessive-compulsive behaviors)
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥*
*♥♥♥♥♥ – Outstanding!