Author: Linda Hilburn
ISBN: 978-0-85738-729-5
RRP: $29.99
Linda Hilburn is back with the sequel to The Vampire Shrink about psychologist Kismet Knight. She has been forced to accept the existence of vampires, and in the process has taken them on as her clients.
Kismet Knight has come to an important crossroads in her life as she weighs up her options. The crazy killer vampire that kidnapped her is still on the loose and his body count is rapidly growing, the victims he is leaving behind are starting to resemble Dr Knight just a little too much to be coincidental and no-one seems to be able to track him.
Devereux is the 800 year old vampire Master who also has his sights set on Kismet but for a totally different reason. In The Vampire Shrink they began a romance and Devereux believes Kismet is his destiny, he is also used to getting his own way.
I found a great deal of humour in Blood Therapy and some interesting cameos, most of whom were not mentioned by name but that didn’t stop you from working out who they were.
Blood Therapy was a book I thoroughly enjoyed and I read it over a weekend that we did a lot of driving so I got to read in the car and found I didn’t want to put the book down. Yet now I find myself stuck for words.
Hilburn brings many elements together for a narrative that keeps you involved. There’s a love triangle, a psychopathic killer, celebrity cameos, neurotic vampires and Kismet’s neverending internal monologue about what she’s getting herself into and whether or not she should.
Kismet’s internal monologue is something which in turns frustrated me and intrigued me. She finds herself quite deeply involved within the vampire underworld with a full schedule of vampire clientele and a complicated relationship with a vampire Master, not to mention being targeted by a psychopathic vampire with multiple personalities yet she still seems to think that she can choose to walk away from that and go back to her normal life….. I can’t see how that is possible. Even if Devereux were to allow her to walk away and agreed to remove all of her memories there is a whole period of her life that almost completely revolved around that world – and it wouldn’t stop the vampire that’s after her.
Hilburn has taken elements of traditional vampire tales that we are completely familiar with and given them a new twist in an interesting and original way and that was something I really loved.
One thing I am still struggling a little to get my head around is the fact that Kismet started this series as such a grounded, literal and rational psyschologist who would only believe what she could see, test and prove yet as we travel further into her story we discover that there is much more to Kismet Knight than meets the eye. She has some quite powerful latent psychic abilities that, with a little help from the vampire elders, grow ever stronger and see her expanding her clientele once more.
The love triangle is very symbolic of Dr Knight’s life and the path it’s traveling with two very different men vying for her, one an extremely powerful, centuries old, mysterious and sexy vampire and the other a mortal FBI profiler. She is attracted to and feels for both but struggling to decide which to choose – almost like the crossroads of her life.
Steam, gore, blood, intrigue and humour – what more would you ask from a vampire novel. I found Blood Therapy to be quite an original concept which is becoming quite rare to find in a vampire novel now, especially when it does contain some quite traditional elements. I have looked forward to this book since reading The Vampire Shrink and I was definitely not disappointed. I can’t wait for Crimson Psyche, the third book.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!