Pandora needs to get married in three months to secure her family inheritance, and Victor needs money to finish his PhD studies. A fake marriage would solve both their problems, and soon sparks are flying between the pair. The only trouble is that Victor has no idea that Pandora is a vampire.
I loved the premise of this book, but the execution let me down a bit. I waffled between a two- and three-star rating for a while, but ended up going with the former for the reasons listed.
The good – the world-building is lots of fun, and I loved Pandora’s family. Gadziala does a good job of portraying what you might term a realistic group (considering they are all, of course, vampires) of the immortal undead who despite coming from a diverse range of eras all belong to the same family. I also enjoyed the pairing of Pandora and Victor, who are the same kind of nerd (category: book), and Pandora’s friendship with the werewolf Lucy.
However, I was disappointed to find that the book is told entirely from Pandora’s perspective. Not only does this eliminate all the humor that could have arisen from his thoughts about Pandora’s eccentric relatives, but I also felt that we really didn’t get to know Victor on a deeper level. There’s no big confession scenes or any direct dialogue about his feelings for Pandora and how he came to fall in love with her, all the way through the end of the book. The majority of the sex scenes are also shoehorned into the book in an awkward way which is made a millions times more awkward by how the characters hardly allude to them or their effect on the so-called ‘fake’ relationship afterward. In a weird way, the romance ended up falling flat because of all of this, despite the characters being likable and compatible.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
