Book Review: “The Vampire And The Virgin” by Kerrelyn Sparks

Warning: If you haven’t read “The Vampire and the Virgin” by Kerrelyn Sparks, don’t read this review if you don’t want spoilers!

Happy September, everyone! I’m back with another book review, and this time it’s “The Vampire and the Virgin” by Kerrelyn Sparks! Like last review, this is once again another vampire/romance book. Here’s the summary so we know what it’s about:

“Olivia’s packing list:

1. Sunscreen
2. Bathing suit
3. Flip-flops

FBI psychologist Olivia Sotiris was looking for a cool ocean breeze, sand between her toes, and a break from her crazy, chaotic, and sometimes all-too-dangerous life. But when she escaped to the small Greek island of Patmos, all she got were meddling grandmothers trying to marry her off. Can’t they see that none of the men around interests her—except Robby MacKay?

Robby’s packing list:

1. Synthetic blood
2. More synthetic blood
3. Jogging clothes (even vamps have to stay in shape!)

Robby needs to cool off, too, since all he can think about is revenge on the Malcontent bloodsuckers who once held him captive—but then he meets Olivia, the beauty with wild curls and a tempting smile. When a deadly criminal from a case back home tracks her down, Robby will have to save her life—along with giving her a first time she’ll never forget . . .”

As hilarious as it seems, I actually thought it was a pretty good call for the rest of the vampires to literally put Robby on suspension on a resort island. Without this, clearly he wouldn’t meet Olivia, and without the support of his vampire allies, I doubt that Robby would’ve made too much of a move to get to know Olivia more. Speaking of friends, Olivia herself also has a group of supportive coworkers, friends and family that do help her out when she needs the help. Her grandmother gives her love advice and looks out for her safety, her friend J.L. is supportive of Olivia and Robby’s relationship (and takes it surprisingly well when he becomes a vampire later on), and it turns out her boss is actually a shapeshifter so he’s relatively fine with the vampire Robby being around.

Understandably, Olivia needed a lot of time to adjust to all this new information.

Though all of these supportive friends and family may appear as happy coincidences at first, the book does a good job of stringing them together in a way that feels more natural and true to the others’ character developments instead of just random happenstance.

I actually really enjoyed reading the chemistry between Olivia and Robby overall, as well as their individual developments. It seems weird to me that every romantic heroine in a vampire romance that I’ve read so far this year are all psychologists, but Olivia is a bit different in the sense that she is also deeply empathetic and so she can usually read most people’s emotions. Because she can’t read Robby as well, this both intrigues and terrifies her. She has a lot of insecurity of being used by past lovers, or more specifically them outright lying to her, and given her increased empathy I can understand why she’d be so cautious about this.

Robby was also fun to read. Not just because of his Scottish accent and how I imagined him speaking because of it, but also because he does mean well for others. Though he is hellbent on vengeance, one can understand why he’d want to—it’s for the purpose of protecting others. However, he does learn over time that giving people second chances can turn out for the better, and this works out well for his individual development and for the relationship he has with Olivia.

Though she and Robby do share attraction at first sight/first meeting/etc., the two of them do have their difficulties to overcome both externally and internally (though mostly internally). Olivia has to deal with putting her trust in Robby, which is hard for her to do given all her insecurities and past failed relationships haunting her, and Robby himself needed to work on getting past straight-up vengeance and give people second chances. I also liked how, despite the Olivia and Robby getting together almost instantly in the beginning, that they slowed down the pacing of the relationship through their shared conflicts and time lapses to make it more believable.

The combat and sex scenes (there were two more major sex scenes in the book if I’m counting correctly) were well-written and not overly-graphic as well.

If there were any minuses to this book, I would say the ending was a little sudden. Literally one chapter after defeating the external bad guy, Otis, the last chapter just kind of appeared and everything ended there. Granted, it was a happy ending, but I think it could have been written so the happy aftermath was a little less sudden.

Overall, I’m rating this book 4.5 out of 5 stars!

If you like this post, please share it with your fellow writer and readers! Also, feel free to follow my blog and/or like my Facebook Page, Twitter, and Tumblr for more reader/writer posts, fanfics, book reviews, and other updates!