[Review] Craved by Rebecca Rivard
I'm in Montreal to discover what vampire Zoe Tremblay, a.k.a. the Ice Princess, knows about my brother’s kidnapping.
Not to finish what I started with Zoe two years ago.
Not to find out why she deceived me and allowed her mother’s enforcers to beat me bloody.
And definitely not to reignite the blood feud between our covens.
ZOE
Rafe Kral, the cocky prince of a rival vampire syndicate, was the forbidden craving I had to taste. But I chose power—and my vampire mother's approval—over love with him. Now he's back, and he needs my help to save his kidnapped brother—and maybe himself.
Because the Kral brothers are being hunted by an unknown assassin.
Help Rafe, and I can kiss goodbye any chance of moving up in my mother’s vampire syndicate. But if I don't do anything, Rafe will be the next Kral who disappears.
And this time, I'll lose him forever.
MY THOUGHTS: As the youngest Kral brother, and the one with the most notorious reputation, I knew Rafe was going to have a good story, and Rebecca Rivard did not disappoint. Not only did Rafe and Zoe have history, but their respective syndicates are at odds, making this vampire romance the perfect combination of enemies-to-lovers and second chance.
I ended up finding Rafe's story to be much more complex than Gabriel's, which I was not expecting. Rivard took us international with this romance, but there were a lot more parts in motion that we got to see than in the previous book. This story actually overlaps with Pursued quite a bit in terms of timeline, but Rafe's story gives us a much bigger sense of what exactly is at stake for the Kral Syndicate.
This was a great middle story for the Vampire Syndicate trilogy; the setup was explored in the first book, giving Rafe lots of room to explore all the secrets and mysteries at play. It also gave Rafe the room to explore his past encounters with Princess Zoe.
While Rafe had the reputation of a ladies man, Zoe was known to be an ice princess. These two couldn't have been better suited for each other. Their chemistry was explosive, despite everyone working to keep them apart. I loved that their adventures were happening at the same time as the first Vampire Syndicate story, yet Rivard gave us a completely unique story that enhances but doesn't rehash everything that happened in Gabriel's story.
Craved was steamy and action-packed. Rivard's writing was on point, and I loved all the little details from the ballroom to the basement cells. This plot definitely gave way more than I was expecting from Rafe's story, and left me absolutely needing to read Zaq's story for the conclusion to the Kral Syndicate's current predicaments.
[Thank you so much to Rebecca Rivard for sending me a review copy of Craved. All opinions are my own.]
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Release date: 6/3/21
Format: ebook
Ebook provided via: the author
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