Tall, Dark & Hungry

Rating:
Summary: Good read.
Review: As preparations for Lucern and Kate's wedding gel, Kate's cousin Terri arrives two weeks early to help. As a favor to the happy couple, Bastien agrees to let her stay in his penthouse. He did not anticipate a number of things happening; his cousin Vincent showing up and biting mortals, including his own housekeeper, a toilet falling on Kate's associate, Chris, forcing her to go on his business trip, the caterer comitting suicide, or the big one, falling for Terri. Terri has her own baggage. After becoming a young widow, falling for a man with a medical condition does not appeal to her, but given the clues she has, IV poles, blood in the fridge, serum... and so on, it's a logical conclusion to make that Bastien's secret is illness. Which will win, head or heart?

**** A subtitle could be "A Series of Unfortunate Events", but that's taken. Yet, out of the porcelain shards comes a great romance and fun read. Here's hoping the d'Argenau family has many branches to explore. ****

Amanda Killgore

Rating:
Summary: Disappointingly ponderous
Review: Bastien Argeneau is getting very tired of his brother's wedding preparations. Much as he loves Lucien and his bride-to-be, Kate, their demands are really intruding on his calm, ordered life. Now things are about to get worse: Kate's cousin Terri is flying in from England for the wedding and she needs somewhere to stay. In Bastien's penthouse.

So not only does he have to listen to his brother spouting about love and weddings incessantly, he's going to have to put up with sharing his home for the next two weeks. That would be bad enough for anyone used to living on his own; but considering that Bastien is a vampire and needs to drink blood regularly in order to remain healthy, it's a recipe for disaster. Oh, not that he actually drinks from humans - these vampires have it all sorted. Owning their own private blood-bank helps.

This is the third in Sands' vampire series, following Lucien and Kate's story in Single White Vampire and Etienne and Rachel's in Love Bites. Unfortunately, it feels as if it were written by a completely different author. Tall, Dark and Hungry has none of the frothy humour of the first two books. Instead, it is boring, repetitive and flat. It was a real struggle to finish. There's no humour this time - there are attempts at it, but all so ponderous that none of them work. Instead, as another reviewer comments, we are treated to page after page of descriptions of things we really don't need to know. Information is supplied in a mundane, uninteresting manner. Trivial details are given the importance of earth-shattering events. The book was incredibly disappointing.

Even the minor characters were tedious; I liked Chris, Kate's fellow editor, in Single White Vampire, but in this book he's a whiny pain in the [...]. And yet Terri notes, by the time of the wedding, that he's a nice guy! Excuse me? He's been nothing but a nuisance to all of them, whining and moaning and accident-prone as hell, complaining about absolutely everything and getting up everyone's nose. And yet she says he's nice? Um... how? As for Vincent, the campy actor, he had his moments but overall I could have done without him.

And then the Big Misunderstanding... big yawn here.

Sorry, Ms Sands, but this book was a flop. If there is another book in your vampire series - and I would like to read Lissianna and Greg's story - please rediscover your earlier flair.

Rating:
Summary: Tall, Dark, and Tame
Review: Beautiful college professor Terri Simpson comes to New York for two weeks to help her best friend (and cousin) get ready for her wedding. She's expecting late nights giggling, last minute shopping, and maybe a bit of mild flirtation with the sexy groomsmen. But her cousin has other ideas--not wanting to be separated from her fiance, she puts Terri up with the groom's brother--Bastien. And Terri can't help notice the chemistry that flows between the sexy male and herself. But Bastien seems to have an alergy to sunlight and a strange proclivity to keep bags of blood around the house. It would be one thing if it was his cousin, Vincent, who is playing a vampire in a campy off-Broadway production, but Bastien? Worse, Terri has already lost one husband to a terrible disease and she's promised herself that she will never put herself in that position again.

After a few hundred years, Bastien thought he had seen everything. He'd had the one great love of his life--a human woman who rejected him when she learned he was a vampire. Now, he concentrates on his business--and he's very good at it. Of course, boredom has set in and he doesn't even bother eating any more as food has lost its appeal, but that's a small price to pay for eternal life. Terri walks into his life and suddenly he's noticing food, noticing sexual desire, wanting to do anything but go to work. He's learned one lesson, though. Human girls turn away quickly when they learn his secret.

When the bride is called out of town and the wedding plans turn to disaster, Bastien and Terri need to work together to solve each crisis, quickly transforming simple desire into something that feels like love. Still, each of them has been burned in the past--and see themselves about to make the same mistake. Can the two overcome their fears to find love?

Author Lynsay Sands makes vampires sexy but safe in this paranormal romantic comedy. Romance readers in the know will get a kick of the way Sands works her editor (Chris K) and Romantic Times publisher Katherine Falk into her story. I would have liked to see more of twists--a payoff to the disasters in the wedding plans and a real kick in the romantic resolution, but TALL, DARK & HUNGRY will certainly appeal to vampire fans who like their males well tamed.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond corney and boring
Review: I read Single White Vampire and Love Bites in one night each, and thought them fresh and funny. It took me a week to slave through this book. It lacks all the humor the first two contained and therefore all the reasons I bothered reading all three. Come on people, does a reader REALLY need 300 descriptions on just how much one person thinks the other person is sexy. I got it the first 20 times it was said, thank you! None of these characters were endearing, funny, or interesting to me. The off the wall situations Sands introduced that (I'm guessing here) she thought would make people laugh, was unrealistic, and therefore unrelatiable.

Please give me some plot here!

Rating:
Summary: The whole series...
Review: I really enjoyed this series. All of the characters were great, and I found that I was looking forward to most of the secondary characters stories that I hope will come. It's just that throughout this series (Love Bites, Singly White Vampire, & Tall, Dark and Hungry) there were many moments where it fell short for me. As I was reading I kept telling myself I couldn't wait to finish the series and move on to something more exciting. If you're looking for a romance/comedy with a great family then you'll enjoy this series. I just need more (a villain, a mission, something!) Yes, there was a comical vampire hunter in Love Bites but as far as vampirism; the author could have skipped it all together. They preferred bagged blood as opposed to biting (which they considered "out of fashion" unless it was an emergency), which for me seemed to take the intimacy out of it. (And as far as the bagged blood, well...Yuck!). These were also not very "Alpha" men. Etienne was a video game inventor, Lucern was an author, and Bastien was a businessman. There were only two instances where Etienne and then Lucern were put in "dangerous" positions where they encountered a vampire hunter (which was more comical than anything else). In "Tall, Dark and Hungry" there was absolutely nothing. Granted I may be comparing this author to Christine Feehan or Sherrilyn Kenyon whom have both created such awesome worlds, and whose books are full of action and suspense. I guess that's just it. These stories are just about relationship development. When I read a "Vampire" book I want magic! Suspense, shape shifting, bad guys, etc...5 stars because this series was great just not my favorite sort.

Rating:
Summary: Very well done!
Review: I thought this book was very refreshing. I have read so many other authors; Charlaine Harris, Christine Feehan, Laurell Hamilton, and MaryJanice Davidson to name a few. I LOVE all these authors and continue to read them, but sometimes it's nice to read something without all the blood and danger. All the stories have someone in danger and being rescued. It's all soooo much drama.

This book however was truly a romance. The characters were well thought out, likable, and believable. They had adventures, fun, disasters, and of course, Romance. Pretty much like normal people have relationships, just with a twist (vampires). A new, very FRESH view!

If your tired of the hero and heroine always in danger and whining over each other - give this book a try:)

Rating:
Summary: Bastian and Terri ... 5++ stars
Review: I wish I could give this one more than 5 stars, but I felt that way about all of the Argeneau books! These brothers are hot, hot, hot! Bastian and Terri's love scenes are remarkably tender and sexy! Terri's past makes it hard for her to open her heart to Bastian, as does his. Both have been wounded in the past either by betrayal (in Bastian's case) or death (in Terri's case) and it's made them a bit skittish to give their hearts away again and risk the pain of loss. I know that in a good romance, the characters have to overcome obstacles to their love but this obstacle seems to be so real. I can, luckily, only imagine losing a spouse or parent to death but it would make it very hard to allow anyone that close again. The fact that the characters love one another enough to try is what makes this a wonderful love story.
I recommend that you read all three books (in order)! They are all terrific and not to be missed - whether you are just a vampire fan or a romance fan! There's enough of both elements for any serious fan to enjoy!!

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but don't waste your time
Review: I'm a reader who thoroughly enjoyed Love Bites and Single White Vampire. This latest installment (Tall, Dark, and Hungry) was just plain dull. Terri, the heroine, was "nice" but way too uninteresting to ever intrigue the romantic interest of a hot male like Bastien, much less inspire him to make her his one and only lifemate. The author seems to tell us how the main characters feel about each other rather than show us how this so-called romance and passion build. From our glimpses of Bastien in the earlier books, we would expect him to have many more dimensions than the boring, flat character we ended up seeing in his featured installment (T,D,and H) Also, many of the fun vampire antics and revelations we loved in the earlier novels were noticably absent here. Maybe the author thought readers would be bored by a repeat of these issues from the other books, but it just makes Terri look plain stupid not to comment on Margerite (sp?) looking like she could be Bastien's sister rather than his mother. The clannish sense of the Argeneau (Sp?) family is also sadly missing here. The one attempt at comedy (a minor character who has a run of bad luck accidents) didn't even earn a chuckle IMO. Tall, Dark and Hungry was disappointing and if you must read it, borrow it free from the library.

Rating:
Summary: These books are baaad, but I can't help myself!
Review: If you think that the books in this series started out unbeatable and just keep getting better and better, this review probably won't be helpful for you. If these books are a guilty pleasure for you, if the writing and comedy (codpiece) sometimes make you wince rather than giggle, yet you find yourself buying them anyway, then read on.

`Tall, Dark and Handsome' is, regrettably, the worst yet. `Love Bites' was marginally more entertaining than re-reading `Single White Vampire', but this one... nah. No conflict, no tension, no plot, (almost) no biting, things are told rather than shown by the paragraph load. There's lots of uninteresting detail that doesn't advance the plot or develop the characters, an example of the not-so-scintillating prose:

`With two hours to kill until Terri's flight arrived, Bastien and Lucern had retired to a bar, having to make their way into the nearest departure terminal to find one. Now they were returning to the arrival area to await Terri, hoping as they did so that she wouldn't be held up too long at customs. Bother were rather weary of waiting, and eager to get out of the airport, what with its buzz of stressed-out travelers and anxious friends and family.'

After reading the 4 pages it took for Kate to ask Bastien to put Terri up in his apartment, the 1 page required to ask him if he could please pick her up at the airport, and the 7 pages required to prepare to pick Terri up at the airport, having to hear about where exactly the bar was located filled some personal psychological beaker of useless information to overflowing.


Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: Loved it, loved it, loved it! It was great. Seeing Bastien fall it love and relax was great. Don't want to give the story away but Bastien is a real type A workaholic and watching him transform into someone who would blow a meeting to spend time with someone special was great. Vincent was a crackup. Poor misunderstood guy who has to get his blood the old fashioned way and gets yelled at for having a taste off the housekeeper and then the editor. Really great. Wish I could think of another word besides great but the book was great, it was funny, it made you laugh throughout the book. I really love Lynsay Sands style of writing. If you are a Sandra Hill fan and a lover of vampires you will love this book and this series. Like Sandra, Lynsay will have you laughing outloud while you read. To me that is important. I loved to be entertained while reading and to feel the full range of emotions while reading and I get that from Lynsay Sands books.