Review: The Vampire Shrink

The Vampire Shrink by Lynda Hilburn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a weakness when it comes to paranormal romance books, especially the kind I’m too embarrassed to read in public. You all know the types I mean – the embarrassing titles and the covers that make old women raises their eyebrows in questioning. Thus, it was no surprise The Vampire Shrink grabbed my attention when I stumbled upon it.

The main thing to grab me about The Vampire Shrink was the promise of something a bit different – a paranormal romance book that was mixed with psychology. Being a student of psychology, my interested was more than grabbed. I also went in with a lot of expectations in my mind.

I will be honest, things were a bit different. Not massively so, but this is clearly a series that will stand out in certain ways. At the same time, however, it felt like a lot of the same. I don’t mind how certain things seem to reappear across the genre – there is only so much that can be done, after all – yet the more I read, the more cliched this one seemed to become.

In truth, I started off a wee bit unsure about this one. Once I got into the story it became a four-star rating. As the story continued, however, that four-star rating became a three-star rating. The story continued to hold my attention, I cannot deny that, but it kept throwing out things that bored me – things I have seen far too many times.

I think the hardest pill for me to swallow, the one I always have difficulty with, was the excessive amount of interest the main character suddenly found herself receiving from males. We went from zero interested males to her giving off some kind of pheromone that had every male – both the living and the dead – interested in her. Even with the story trying to explain it off, I found it hard to enjoy this element of the story – it dragged away from the stuff I was really interested in.

I am interested in picking up the next book, Blood Therapy, but I’m not as crazy about it as I had expected to be. There are things I want to understand better, things were opened up I want to know more about, but the way things ended so quickly in this one lessened my desire to pick up the next book. It is more so a case of I will grab it if I see it on offer, but I will not go out of my way to grab it.

Overall, this was an okay read. I wasn’t as crazy about it as I had hoped to be – in other words, it is not to be another paranormal romance series I obsessively power my way through – but it was decent enough.

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