Author website.
Mother, wife, private investigator ... and vampire. Six years ago, federal agent Samantha Moon was the perfect wife and soccer mom with the minivan and suburban home. Then the unthinkable happened, an attack that changed her life forever. And forever is a very long time for a vampire.
Samantha's adventures as a night-roaming vampire and private investigator in Samantha Moon include ...
Vampire for Hire #1) Moon Dance: Samantha is hired by Kingsley Fulcrum to investigate the attempt on his life, a horrific scene watched on TV around the country. But Kingsley isn't exactly what he appears to be; after all, there is a reason why he survived five shots to the head.
Vampire for Hire #2) Vampire Moon: Samantha Moon hunts down a powerful crime lord and protects an innocent woman from her ruthless ex-husband-all while two very different men vie for her heart. As the stakes grow higher and her cases turn personal, Samantha Moon will do whatever it takes to protect the innocent and bring two cold-blooded killers to justice-her own brand of justice.
Vampire for Hire #3) American Vampire: Samantha receives a heartbreaking call from a very unlikely source: a five-year-old girl who's been missing for three months. Using her considerable resources-including her growing supernatural abilities-to locate the missing girl before it's too late, Samantha also receives devastating news on the home front, forcing her to make the ultimate choice of life and death.
Vampire for Hire #4) Moon Child: Samantha Moon is faced with an impossible decision that will change her life and those of the ones she loves forever-a decision that no mother should ever have to make. And through it all, Samantha finds herself in a lethal game of vampire versus vampire as a powerful and desperate enemy will stop at nothing to claim what he most desires.
Christmas Moon: With Christmas just around the corner, Samantha takes on a very strange case: A priceless family treasure has been stolen, something passed down through the generations and buried in secrets. And Samantha gets half of whatever it is ... if she can find it first.
... and an all-new Samantha Moon short story by J.R. Rain. (netgalley.com)
I was SUPER excited to get to reading this omnibus. Mainly because I'm a little desperate for something different. As if vampires are something different, right? But this just sounded so neat. A vampire PI? Hell yeah I'll try that out.
Eleven pages into book one and I wanted to light it on fire. I mean we're talking so bad I actually stopped reading. I know I've had a small string of DNFs lately but you all know me; I usually give them far more of a chance than a mere eleven pages. Hell, HALO got more than that from me. I just couldn't do it with SAMANTHA MOON. It was too terrible.
First the writing, much like WILDE'S FIRE, was too unpolished. The sentences were just strung along together, getting me from point A to point B with no flourish and would alternate between zipping through seemingly more important moments, like backstory, and hanging out at mundane crap I didn't care about, like picking up her kids from school. I don't care. It was an underdeveloped work.
Next the MC wanted to hump every male leg that she crossed paths with. I'm okay with vamporn of the pornpire. Not a problem with it. But I HATE it when every male that crossed the MC's path is described by their varying levels of fuckability. Especially when the MC is already married. Yeah, no. Bitch, you're a trashhole. The opening scene was Samantha getting a delivery from a UPS guy and I honest to god thought it was either a porn dream or I was reading erotica with the way the dude was described. And of course he was some super awesome, super sexy guy that the MC just wanted to bang right against the door jamb. Yeah, because all of my delivery men look like that. And she constantly had to throw mental ice water on herself. I was just not cool with it. Especially since she was already married. It's okay to look but this woman might as well have just ingested a keg of Spanish Fly. Gross.
And then there was the name-dropping. Burger King, Coppertone and a few others. In eleven pages there were five that I counted, four of those within three consecutive paragraphs. Annoying. Why can't you just say you stopped for burgers? Why can't you just say you slathered on sunscreen? Do you get paid for every name you drop? Blech.
But the kicker? Samantha was viewing video footage of some dude getting gunned down. And the assassin was using a .22. NOT A CHANCE IN HELL. Did the guy sit down to pee too? But I kept reading. And then that same gun totally shredded a tree big enough to hide a guy the size of a Coke machine. And we're done. Fucking seriously? Dear authors: if you're going to write about guns, DO YOUR GODDAMN RESEARCH. I hate it when authors want to use guns but instead of actually looking into them they just watch some movies with guns in them. I'm sure this author would have people flying back after getting hit with a .22 too. Boo. Sorry, author. You've totally blown my trust. We can't be friends.
So yeah. Eleven pages into book one and done. Could I recommend this to someone? If you like mediocre writing, name-dropping and know nothing about guns and can thus swallow such fallacies, by all means take a stab at it. I won't be making it.
Ban Factor: High - Vampires, assassins and a way-too-horny married woman. Yeah, cooked.
