Now patriciar

Original Letter to my Future Self was posted here.Let­ter to my Future SelfDear Patri­cia,in a moment of deep daddy issued rage you ordered those two nov­els despite your ini­tial belief that they were writ­ten for young adults – an age-group you shy away from in real life and in fic­tion. Look­ing at the cover one would believe this was way more Urban Fan­tasy than PNR, but this some­one (and I’m talk­ing about me here) would be wrong.Night­shade was pretty good. It is about a woman who acci­dently stum­bled into one hell of a mess. Injected with a serum that is addic­tive and deadly to vam­pires, she has been taken hostage by one hell of a half-vampire who pretty much hates every­thing about his super­nat­ural her­itage and wants to use her as a weapen against vampires.I’ll make it short because this is about two nov­els after all.In Night­shade I liked Jill, the hero­ine, very much. First of all, her name rocks. But she also had some huge poten­tial, even though she’s no run­ner for the favorite hero­ine spot. Unfor­tu­nately she dis­ap­pointed me in Blood­lust, but more about that later on.Matthias, the bad guy, was very cool. I have a thing for well-written vil­lains and he def­i­nitely is one, even though I do not like his past and how he always had more than one lover etc. I sup­pose that is because I can­not really roman­ta­size him this way, but he still intrigued me.Declan, the actual lovein­ter­est, was very inter­est­ing. He seems to be inspired by heroes like Ter­ri­ble and that made me like him very quickly. He takes meds to do exactly what the peo­ple he works for want, which makes him one cold bas­tard. Reminds me of some Anti Depres­sants, and that made me like his plot­line alot.The whole story was good and I think peo­ple will enjoy Night­shade. I’m not regret­ting that I bought the paper­back copies of this and the next install­ment, but it could have been much bet­ter. There was more poten­tial to the novel and Rowen didn’t use all of that. But I also think that some parts could not have been bet­ter exe­cuted. So it’s a mix­ture of aver­age idea and aver­age exe­cu­tion, plus pop­u­lar tropes and some rather spe­cial char­ac­ters. My, my. I’m so confused.In com­par­i­son Blood­lust was less good. Where in the first install­ment I was able to han­dle the hero­ine, in this one she wasn’t behav­ing like a 28 yrs old woman with some super­nat­ural pow­ers and respon­si­bil­i­ties. She didn’t even act like an 18 yrs old girl. She was very child­ish, very often. She (fre­quently) hurt Declan because he hurt her – to hurt him back, which was not accept­able for me. I know that peo­ple tend to do it, and I don’t like it then, either.I think their rela­tion­ship is a lit­tle too unhealthy and what’s been shown in this and the first novel doesn’t jus­tify her (and his) use of the word “love” altough one could argue that he is from an emo­tional point of view younger than a four­teen yrs old facebook-addict, which makes it sort of okay for him to say it. As long as he is not on my friends list on Face­book. Naturally.The plot was good, though. Not super-awesome, but it was thick enough and I like me some Noah and Matthias.Future Self, while those two nov­els didn’t com­pletely blew my mind, they def­i­nitely enter­tained me. Rowen knows how to play with tropes and if she had changed a few things those two books could eas­ily have become favorites of mine. I hope you’ll pick other Rowen books up in the future!Sin­cerely,Patri­cia