Review: The Life and Death of Lily Drake by T. Michelle Nelson

Title: The Life and Death of Lily Drake
Author: T. Michelle Nelson
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: InkSpell Publishing (Aug 21 2012)
Get it: Pre-Order @ InkSpell Publishing - B&N


Goodreads
For Lily Drake, slaying vampires is easy...Dating them is the hard part.

Lily Drake is your everyday hard-working single mom…until a gorgeous vampire shows up on her front door who she mistakenly assumes is her blind date for the evening. As one crazy scenario after another unfolds, Lily finds herself falling in love with two vampires, slaying the evil ones, and being prophesied as the savior of the entire undead race.
Deciding between pizza and Chinese take-out will no longer be one of the hard decisions facing Lily Drake once she is emerged into vampire society. Humanity or immortality? That doesn't hold a candle against this question - which of the two handsome vampire cousins?

The Life and Death of Lily Drake is not your typical vampire love story. It’s a tale about the humorous mistakes a woman makes simply trying to survive not only life, but the dating scene. How will Lily manage working full-time, taking care of her young son and fighting the undead at every turn?
Lily will have to figure it out, but who better to save the world than a mom?

Review

When Lily Drake mistakes a vampire for her blind date her whole word is turned upside down. She wakes up in a strange bed inside of an even stranger mansion, unsure of how she got there and afraid of why she's there. When it is explained to her that she is descended from two powerful vampire bloodlines and that she's needed in order to protect not only human life but vampires as well, she naturally thinks everyone is out of their mind. Vampires don't exist, right? Lily soon learns just how wrong she is.

Being turned into a vampire herself is not something that she's willing to do though. She has a 12 year old son to think about. Keaton is the most important person in her life. But when she falls in love with Mathias, she gives a second thought to the idea of turning. And then when spending a lot of time training with Valentine, Mathias' cousin, turns into strong feelings towards each other, Lily's left even more confused.  Now she must decide which of the two cousin's she really wants, if either. Then there is the small matter of humans not being allowed to know that vampires exist.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. There were some very interesting twists that I didn't expect nor did I see them coming, particularly a betrayal that I was shocked to learn about. Being a fan of romance, I naturally was rooting for Lily and Mathias. It broke Lily's heart to think that if she didn't turn, she'd have her memories wiped and she'd lose all of the vampires that she's grown to care so much for including Rose, Burchard and Valentine. But then when Valentine fell in love with Lily and she realized she loved him in return, I wasn't sure who I wanted to root for at first. But when I really thought about it, it really wasn't a hard decision. Needless to say I was pleased with the ending.

Now although I did enjoy the book, I did feel as though there were some slow moments. There just seemed to be some instances where the flow of the story was interrupted. I guess maybe, for me, some of those instances was when you were told about the everyday, mundane things that were going on in Keaton's life. I get that the story is about Lily and that her son is very important to her and that she wants life to be normal for her son. It was just that some of what was being told regarding his everyday life slowed the story down for me.

I still very much enjoyed the The Life and Death of Lily Drake! I think the surprises and the twists that I mentioned more than made up for any area I felt slowed down the story. I would definitely read more of T. Michelle Nelson's work.

** I received an eARC copy of the book from InkSpell Publishing for review.**

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