A standard review of this book is available on my Goodreads here.

This was the first book we decided to do for a spontaneously created book club. We went with the theme of romance for February, and this book won the voting due to sounding so intriguing. Here's the bio for the book that won over the people:

V.A.M.P.: Serena & Katerina by Kimberly Todd, 508 pages

Is it possible to find a second chance at love? Being rich, powerful, and thirty years old for eternity has its perks. Being a heartbroken, 800-year-old lesbian vampire, not so much.

Genres: Vampires, Lesbians, Romance, Urban Fantasy, Erotica

The things I was most interested in was just... the fact it's a lesbian dark romance. I appreciate cheesy, self-indulgent dark romance and couldn't wait to see what this book had in store. Straight girls are usually the ones that get all the fun in this regards. It started off pretty good. Not peak writing, but easy to read, interesting set-up to a romance, and quick to jump into sex with the blood-maids. I didn't even mind there was a boyfriend character to start with. However, the gimmick of the book set it back a lot.

It jumps back and forth between the two characters' perspectives, which I don't mind. But they first of all have very weak voices, so you can barely tell who is talking if not for context cues. And second of all, they often just... repeat... the exact same events with very minimal changes. So you're basically reading the same thing twice. If that repetitiveness was cut out, the book would have paced much better. Honestly, after the very initial bit of the book, it fell off fast as things dragged out. The two main girls take forever to have sex. And the blood-maid sex is not interesting enough to make up for it.

Serena, the vampire protagonist, is heartbroken after her original girlfriend died and couldn't be protected. There was honestly so much set-up for her to be an obsessive yandere lover who would do anything to prevent her new human girltoy, Katerina, from falling to the same fate. And the thing is they kind of do this. Serena does stuff that is not normal. But it never really goes... nearly far or interesting enough. She comes off as normal obsessive rich girl, not a yandere vampire who is disconnected from humanity.

My biggest issue is the subplot of the Evil Biotech Labs. As-is in the story, it's just something that's jarringly cut to after sex scenes and is basically pointless yet very obviously foreshadowed endgame climax material. Basically, it feels like two different stories duct-taped together. We discussed this in the book club and decided that this is where we thought things should have gone:

Serena and Katerina get together fast. Cut out the in-story boyfriend and straight sex scene. Have Katerina be broken up with maybe right before the story started, so shes burned and ready for a sexy billionaire to pick her up. Serena immediately uses her billionaire and vampire powers to trap Katerina with her and manipulates her in a slow burn into being okay with this situation. Harem sex with the blood-maids, or jealousy sex between the blood-maids and Katerina should happen. Have the biotech stuff be more involved in the story. Katerina's mother is sick - she should be involved in the human trials, and one of the things that snaps her back into reality is her mothers life being at risk.

I don't know. Basically anything that actually involves vampire and strange happenings and dark romance and not generic possessive billionaire content with characters that do not develop at all throughout the story. I really wanted this book to be good, and books that you have high hopes for and drop the ball so bad are the ones that are most disappointing.