Love Bites – the stakes were too high

Love Bites by Lynsay Sands is the second book in the Argeneau Vampires series. But in the order of actual publication, it was the second book after the first book published Single White Vampire. But in the series, it follows what is technically actually Book 1 of the A Quick Bite Series. Convoluted, I know. Having said that mouthful, let me say that if this book was actually published as a follow on prequel to what was the first book at the time, perhaps the stakes (no pun intended) were too high, and could be perhaps why this story felt flat.

The Argeneau in this series is Etienne, third son, and the hot nerd boy of the clan. He is a computer wiz, highly intelligent, but a bit of a recluse. I was disappointed by Etienne’s general ineptitude in more than one area. I mean, shouldn’t he have grown out of his awkward stage after being alive for 300 years?

We open with the attempt on his life by his stalker, and the question that I had upon discovering that Etienne was aware he had a stalker was “why is this stalker still a problem?” Isn’t there somewhere in the clan’s collective experience some guidelines on what to do if a human goes OCD on a vampire and threatens his very existence? If not, there should be, then Etienne could read the guidebook and take some action, instead of remaining catatonic with indecision.

Etienne meets his lady love after a run-in with a bullet from his stalker. He wakes up in the morgue to find that he can’t “read” the mind of the human named Rachel. Rachel thinks that the handsome corpse who is sitting up on the gurney is part of a hallucination from her bout with the flu. She faints, he disappears, and hilarity ensues.

Next meet-up, Etienne still hasn’t done anything to discourage the attentions of his stalker, and now ends up in the morgue after a car bomb goes off in his face. Hilarity ensues when Rachel, this time having recovered from her flu, meets up with her handsome corpse again, only to find him on the mend and with a heartbeat. But before she can figure out what to do, in bursts the stalker, screaming “Vampire!” and mistakenly plunges his axe into her chest, instead of into Etienne, in an attempt to remove his head. What a mess.

I say hilarity ensues with all sarcasm because it’s really ludicrous and frustrating how easily Rachel dismisses these corpse coincidences, dismissing them all as a dream or part of her sickness. This ability to separate her realities will come in handy as she denies the reality of the situation when Etienne, forced to save her life by turning her into a vampire, attempts to convince her that 1) vampires are real, 2) she has joined their ranks, 3) it was his only option–he did it to save her life.

Her delusions are so real that she convinces herself out loud that their first encounter in his bedroom is really just an elaborate “wet dream” that she is manipulating and that her fantasy is to be the aggressor to his more demure, hesitant role. It’s ridiculous and uncomfortable to read, right up to the point where they are interrupted when his mother walks in on them literally in the middle of their heavy foreplay. Yikes…

Etienne disappoints me, too, because it seems that all his brethren are well clued into the world of the vampire, their laws, and the reasons behind the laws. I am sure that in his three centuries of life, this was all explained to him, but he seems genuinely clueless about the fact that Rachel is his life mate because he can’t read or manipulate her mind.

Life mates are like soul mates, and it’s noted that they realize that they found the one when they can’t penetrate that partner’s mind. It makes it an even partnership, not a puppet-master relationship. In fact, even when he turns her (and vampires in this world are only allowed to turn one human in their lifetime, which is why they save that distinction for their life mate) he does so out of chivalry, to return the favor-as it were- for saving his life by taking the fatal blow, and understands the ramifications of the act, but does not emphasize the coincidental fact that HE CAN’T READ HER MIND! Oh, it’s so frustrating.

How can he be so clueless? And it’s really not cute, it’s annoying.

Perhaps the author was attempting to make Etienne the cliche’d typical male, working on assumptions like:

1) women should be able to read your mind (in the vampire sense, she should be able to because he can), thereby saving the men from having to grow a pair and actually voice their thoughts

2) It’s perfectly okay to make lame attempts at romance; any halfhearted effort should be taken as a grand gesture.

3) Seething with jealousy because someone else is making a move on your babe, but choosing instead to project your complaint through a variety of passive-aggressive options like glaring and grumbling under your breath is perfectly acceptable.

Etienne exhibits all of these, and it’s no wonder that he ever makes a move on Rachel, seeing as how he is racked with indecision most of the time.

I will credit the book to say that their encounters are plenty and full of steamy activity. There is one particularly intriguing scene in the garden where Rachel takes it to places I am sure most have only fantasized about, and it was well worth the risk, at least I am sure Etienne thought it was a risk well taken, and received!

So Rachel and Etienne fumble their way through this comedy of errors. Rachel spends most of the time in denial of her reality and its ramifications for her life, and Etienne is in denial about the importance of voicing his feelings for Rachel, no matter how quickly they might have developed, instead of attempting to emotionally manipulate her because he is afraid of getting his manly feelings hurt. It takes the cooperative effort of the Argeneau clan to get Etienne and Rachel together for good. Are they really meant to be? It’s frustrations galore to the end.