The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires by Molly Harper Edition: Mass Market Paperback Price: $7.99 Availability: In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process. Kindle Price: $7.99
4.5 Stars, August 5, 2012 The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires by Molly Harper Molly Harper's books never seem to let me down. I love re-reading them when I've had too much of the overly brooding angst that so many of today's speculative fictions book seem to have. While Ms Harpers male protagonists do seem to be a tad dark, there is always a bit of sly wit running through them, you just know that they want to let go of their dark and broody character and let go with a good belly laugh. And as luck would have it, that is just what I found when I read this book. Iris is going about her job as a Vampire concierge. She makes it through her day and at her next job just around sunset, literally lands on her rear-end tripping over her newest client who is seemingly dead on the floor with blood pooled around him. Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you choose to see things, Cal (Cletus) is still very much undead and is suffering from poisoning. He makes a deal with Iris for a place to hide out while he investigates who is poisoning the Vampires and turning them into ravening monsters. Now of course Cal is a semi-broody vamp who has live a few thousand years and, has seen or done it all. What he has never encountered is a woman like Iris and her teen-aged sister. He finds himself, against his better judgment and his common sense, being drawn to these two sassy women and becoming attached even as he professes that as soon as the job is done he is off to the next job. He has always been footloose and fancy free. But now...not so much! I loved this book. It is funny, sexy, mysterious, fast paced and I even got to learn a little about botany and botanicals. The characters are well drawn, the narrative is interesting and fast paced, the descriptions are, well, descriptive and really doesn't leave too much to your imagination. As far as needing to read the novella that is supposed to be the first `book' in this series - it is not imperative. You can easily read this as a standalone. But I think that you will be curious enough about some of the women you will encounter in this novel to go back and read some of the previous books even though they aren't part of this series