Review: Kiss of Midnight (Midnight Breed #1) by Lara Adrian

TLDR Recap:

After bearing witness to a brutal murder, Gabrielle Maxwell’s life turns upside down when the police find no evidence and she’s left thinking herself crazy. Lucan Thorne dispatches the Rogues outside the club, and follows the woman that was lucky to escape the carnage and, pretending to be a police officer, aims to find out what she knows. He doesn’t intend to get involved with her, but upon discovery that she’s already immersed in his world, he’s forced to give her all the gory details. It’s within each other that they find everything they were missing and never thought to look for in their lives. GraveTells calls this a recommended read!

• Title: Kiss of Midnight
• Series: Midnight Breed book #1
• Author: Lara Adrian
• Prominent Characters: Gabrielle and Lucan
• Recommended Reader Age: 18+
• Sexual Content Level: Strong

*** This review is SPOILER-FREE! Read on with confidence! ***

Thoughts:

I enjoyed this take on vampires. I have never read a vampire story with a lore quite like this one, it was positively out of this world! The fine line that divides the good guys from the bad makes you hold your breath at times waiting to see if that line gets crossed. There’s such a delicate balance that any Breed, especially the older generations, could find themselves on the other side in the blink of an eye, and there’s just no going back once that happens.

The Rogues definitely embody the “enemy” role as they’re brutal and insatiable. Knowing their numbers could grow before anyone saw it coming makes them an ever-present and very dangerous threat. Add a woman that finds herself mysteriously drawn to them making her the center of both the Rogues’ attention and the Breed’s, and you’ve got the catalyst for a hell of conflict.

This book is well paced and well written; the plot elements interesting, and the character dynamics occasionally fun. However, overall I think it just felt like it was missing a little something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what. The romance was there, though at first based purely on physical attraction rather than any emotional ties (those grew later), but the sex scenes felt a little short lived. Maybe I’m just a smut addict and wanted more in that regard.

Memorable Quotes:

Rules were made to be broken, right?

Here, someone had discreetly severed the links with a wire cutter, creating a breach just large enough for a curious adolescent to wriggle through—or a determined female photographer who tended to view “No Trespassing” and “Authorized Personnel Only” signs more as friendly suggestions rather than enforceable laws.

Women think with the wrong brain sometimes too…

Maybe he hadn’t called to apologize or to explain his absence because he physically couldn’t. Right. And maybe she had checked her brain into her panties from the second she first laid eyes on the man.

I swear men are allergic to emotion.

“Jesus,” Dante interjected when the heavy quiet in the vehicle seemed endless. “All this touchy feely is making me itchy to kill something. How about we quit jerking each other off and go blow the roof off this mutha?”

If you liked Kiss of Midnight…

If you enjoyed Kiss of Midnight, you should absolutely check out Dark Lover by JR Ward. Sexy vampire warriors fighting an eternal battle right under humanity’s nose. Ward’s writing style matches that of Adrian’s and many of the story’s elements (the compound the Breed resides in and some of the characters’ traits in particular) are incredibly similar.

You should also look at the Immortal Guardians series by Dianne Duvall, starting with Darkness Dawns. Like the Midnight Breed, the vampires in Duvall’s books are two sides of the same race. Her writing style is also similar and has many surprising plot twists, much like Adrian.

Final Thoughts:

Rating: Kiss of Midnight