Primal Needs

By Susan Sizemore

Joe and Sid were partners in business until one weekend when business turned into pleasure. Even though Sid (who's a female) knew it was a really bad idea she let herself fall in love with Joe and spend that forbidden weekend in his arms. The problem is that Sid is a vampire and Joe is a werewolf and the two are not supposed to mix and if the other vampires find out, Joe is a dead dog. So to protect Joe, Sid pulled a vampire mind trick on him and erased his memory of their passion. But Joe knew what she had done, and with a little help from a witch, he was able to recover the memories. But he is extremely angry at Sid for what she did.
In the meantime, over the course of a couple years, Sid has had a baby vampire boy and been forced to give him to a special nursery for baby boy vampires equipped to deal with their wild ways and the vampires pulled the same kind of mind trick on Sid that she had done to Joe, to ease her grief at giving up her baby. (Getting rid of the kid is really necessary to the plot otherwise he might get in the way of Joe & Sid getting back together and having lots of passionate supernatural sex.)
Joe has joined a mercenary group composed of various supernatural beings working together to thwart a gang of outlaw supernaturals who desire nothing more than world domination. A series of fires and bombings have been traced to these outlaws and Joe's group is in thick of the investigation and Sid finds herself drawn into it also and once again working with Joe.
Joe can't forgive her but their passion is very much alive and between bouts of investigation they manage to find time for lots of sex. Joe may hate Sid but he still wants her. Gradually they work out their differences but once again Joe's life is in danger from the righteous anger of Sid's fellow vampires. Also, Sid's dad is in love with an old lady in a nursing home that he loved back when he was a soldier in WW II. And the old lady gets kidnapped by the outlaw gang and turned into a young lady so Sid's dad and the former old lady can have lots of passionate sex. Duh! It's not like he would want to pork a wrinkled old crone no matter how much he might have loved when she was young and juicy. So of course she has to become young again.

Another entree in the vampire chronicles that seem to be the new hot romance literature any more. At least in this one the vampires have some of the old vampire problems: garlic, sunshine, stake through the heart, blood thirst. But in this series they deal with them by taking medications. It enables them to blend into normal society better. So that part was acceptable. What wasn't acceptable was how disjointed this story seemed. The many references to occurrences in previous novels in the series were jarring and confusing. They serve as reminders to readers familiar with the previous novels but to someone who is not, it is too much info. Plus the story is in the midst of the Joe & Sid plot when suddenly a new plot is plopped down out of nowhere involving Sid's dad and stuff that happened back in the 1940s. It was kind of contrived tying the two plots together and I never did understand the explanation of how the old lady got young again. Was it the potion she was subjected to or was it the bite of her vampire lover? It wasn't made clear or maybe I just wasn't following that part too well. Bottom line, this is just another typical entry in the new vampire lit where vampires are just regular folks and not at all the evil blood suckers of the night that they used to be. Ho-hum...