I have been trying to get my mitts on this for a very long time. I kept seeing scathing reviews and knew that if it were that controversial..........well I had to read it.
The low down is that Rachel is an LDS bishop's wife. Her young daughter Jennifer is dying of leukemia. A gorgeous young vampire named Milada moves into the ward. Rachel figures out what Milada is. She asks Milada help her save her child's life by infecting her with the virus that makes one a vampire.
While there was an awesome story in there... it derailed. Milada's high powered job which entailed buying out companies and shallow relationships between mother/daughter and wife/husband left me desperate for the meatier story that never fleshed out.
Now I do appreciate when an LDS author has the courage to write characters that aren't all unattainable, cheesy, do gooders. On the other hand if you are going to write as an LDS author and not just your general population author.....there have to be some things which you just leave out. I can take sex between married people, heck I could even deal with an affair, what I struggled with was the lesbian scenes......for sort of no purpose. There were some snippets of tantalizing writing which would have been great if they were delved into at all. Such as Rachel having to decide if she wanted to destine her daughter to Hell in order to save her life......which is what I think the book may have been about.
Rachel kinda seemed not to a have a dying daughter and to be living her religion for the sake of appearance. I'm pretty sure that isn't how she was supposed to be though.
The book felt like it wanted to be edgy and then slithered off the cliff by accident. Yet some how, I still liked what there was to like. Vampirism caused by a virus. The vampires could eat and be in the sun (although they sunburn severely when they are unprotected). The virus causes them to be albino like and their body ages only fractionally over a long time. Plus the author had a great grasp of when to put in scriptures and that part actually turned out pretty cool.
Rating 3 Meh.....I liked it but I know there was a better story in there that didn't get written.
Rating Ugh...probably R.....maaaaaaybe PG 13. Some swearing, lesbian hook up, talk of sex, alluding to sexual assault.
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