ARC Review: Black Sunshine by Karina Halle

 



All Lenore Warwick wants for her 21st birthday is to hang out with her friends, finish her second year at Berkley with flying colors, and maybe catch the eye of a hot musician playing a show at a club that she can now (legally) get into.

Unfortunately, fate has other plans for her.

A week before her birthday, she's kidnapped by the brooding and dangerous stranger with cold eyes and a lethal touch, who has been stalking her on San Francisco's fog-shrouded streets. Absolon Stavig isn't your average criminal though. He's a centuries-old vampire who's caught between wanting to kill Lenore and wanting to save her.

You see Lenore, too, is a vampire.

She just doesn't know it yet.

Taken by a pair of vampire slayers when she was just an infant, Lenore was raised never knowing her true nature. All Lenore knows is that she has seemingly normal parents who love her, that she's exceptionally smart, and she's squeamish around blood. But once she turns twenty-one, she'll fully turn into a vampire, and Solon hopes he'll be there to guide her, opening her eyes to her deepest hunger...both sexual and otherwise.

But this turning can't be kept a secret. Soon both slayers and vampires are hunting Lenore, with only Solon and his unpredictable motley crew of vampires to save her.
If they don't kill her first.

Black Sunshine is a dark adult standalone romance with a paranormal twist, about sex, love, secrets, and revenge, set in contemporary San Francisco.


Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QBMM0s

Amazon Worldwide: mybook.to/BlackSunshine

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2NOo2Bc


**ARC provided in exchange for an honest review**

I have read hundreds of paranormal romances and a lot of them featured vampires. I was extremely excited when Karina Halle announced that she was writing a dark paranormal romance. Black Sunshine was very sensual and there were a couple of very steamy scenes. This book was marketed as a dark adult standalone romance, however it wasn't as dark as I wanted it to be. Karina is definitely capable of writing very dark and twisted romances (e.g. her Dirty Angels Trilogy). The prologue was pretty emotional and got me intrigued to see which direction the story would go. The main character Lenore Warwick was awesome and very likable. Absolon "Solon" Stavig was exactly how I like my (anti)heroes: dark, broody and mysterious. I didn't know what to expect from this story and that is definitely how I like my paranormal romance. I was really looking forward to seeing which direction the author would take this story.

Overall I thought Black Sunshine was a good paranormal romance. I didn't love it but it definitely kept me interested until the end. I thought the chemistry between the characters was great and the sex scenes were super hot. However, I wanted it to be darker and I thought the relationship between Lenore and Solon developed pretty quickly, especially in the second half of the book. I didn't feel like Lenore had enough time to get used to being a vampire, and Solon went from being her captor to lover fast. So the transition from lust to love didn't feel organic in my opinion. This book would've been better as a duet instead of a stand-alone, because some things just felt rushed, especially in the last quarter of the book. I still enjoyed the story and all the characters, and I hope the author will write more stories in this world.


 

Meet Karina



Karina Halle is a former travel writer, music journalist & screenwriter, and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal & USA Today Bestselling author of over 55 bestselling novels, ranging from horror and suspense to contemporary romance. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband, and her adopted pitbull Bruce, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.
Halle is represented by the Root Literary Agency and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster, Hachette & Montlake. Her work has been translated and published in 20 languages.
Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com and sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more.


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