Dance Until Dawn by Berni Stevens (book review).
‘Dance Until Dawn’ is a stand-alone novel of the romantic paranormal persuasion.
Ellie Wakefield wakes up in a cold dark cellar with no idea where she is or how she got there. It happens that she is actually in the cellar of a 300 year-old vampire, William James Austen, who has been stalking her for the past year in the hopes that one day she will become his. Luckily for him, Ellie gets hit by a car while he’s stalking her, giving him the opportunity to make her into a vampire. Step one on the ‘making Ellie mine’ plan. Unfortunately for Ellie, who is also extremely squeamish, afraid of losing control and not keen on the dark. Just as she’s becoming used to the idea of being a vampire, Will’s ex-girlfriend/maker Khiara shows up in town intent on claiming him back and she’s not afraid to kill or maim whoever is in her path.
I have to say that I honestly found this book a chore to read for at least the first half, it really dragged with Ellie very slowly coming to terms with being a vampire. However, I did enjoy the dual viewpoints, first seeing things through Ellie’s eyes and then seeing a short diary entry from Will to give his perspective. This just about dragged me through the first part of this book. Things did get much more interesting once Khiara, Will’s maker, shows up and start causing mayhem.
I also found the first half of the book to be a bit weird as Will is trying to make Ellie into his partner for the rest of eternity. It all just felt a bit too creepy for me to really want to get on board with the romance. Even towards the end, I felt that Ellie was just becoming Will’s other half because she had nowhere else to go and maybe once she’s had a few decades to think about the fact that he used to follow her around and write in his little book every time he saw her, she might think better off dating him. Will just kept on reminding Ellie that even if it took forever for her to be happy with being a vampire and living with him then he would wait patiently. This sounds romantic but it really didn’t come off that way in the book and I kept wanting her to run away!
I liked a lot of the other characters in the book, including the other vampires and the solitary werewolf we meet. However, I did find them all to be a little one-dimensional, maybe because this is only a little book and not part of a series so we don’t get to know them all that well. I really wanted Ellie to go off with Luke as I found him to be the most likeable character in the book, but he seemed to want only to be a protector rather than anything else, possibly for his own safety as Will is incredibly jealous.
Overall, this wasn’t a bad book, just a little dry and dull and I couldn’t get behind the romance, maybe because I was reading this more as a romance book rather than an urban fantasy due to the publisher. This wasn’t a very original plot but parts of it were well handled and could have done with a little more exploring.
Sarah Bruch
October 2014
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(pub: Choc Lit. 342 page paperback. Price: £ 5.73 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-78189-132-2)
check out website: www.choc-lit.com/