Blood Diva by V.M Gautier

I asked and received this book through NetGalley for free. This review is not sponsored nor influenced in anyway. This book s expected to be published on August 10

First impression

When I read the description of the book at NetGalley I was really captivated: a French Courtesan from the late 19th century, becomes a vampire, she finds love and might want to go back to being human (this was a new thing). The book is also described as humorous, dark and sometimes erotic (usual on a lot of Vampire related books) and ends up with the question: can she find happiness?

And then I started reading the book...I found very little humor in the story. Some differences in personality amongst the vampire characters...and A LOT of sex, I would even say, TOO much sex.

Final thoughts

She understood it was her role as a woman to visually stimulate him[...]

Let's clarify first that I do not consider myself a prude. I am ok with sex scenes both in books and movies, even when they might be a bit graphic...but having a book that had sex scenes almost every other third page without this giving much or sometimes anything to the story I don't like. It bothers me as much as Sci-Fi books throwing out of the blue invented words just so it looks Sci-Fi. No, you shouldn't need to build your story around gimmicks like this, and for me Blood Diva ended up being a book that relied almost solely in the sex part.  

Other thing that was overused on the book was based upon their non-blood diet, which is vegetarian. So far this is fine, but I got tired of hearing about the organic this and the organic that, and the organic I don't know what. Again, it became a crotch in the story, and seriously, the idea of the vampires not being able to digest "dead blood" explained perfectly why a vegan diet, fine. But even then, do we really need to be told every time that they eat it was organic vegetables/fruits?

The character of Alphonse had potential, she often felt to me as a very (potentially) interesting character. But again, most of the characters were hardly developed. "Her kind" (which I think was an attempt to not overuse the word vampire, but it ended up being an overused term) was full of very different personas, but I never really got to know any of them because the moment they would be together they would humping like bunnies.

You might ask then, why I am giving 2 stars if there is so much I didn't like? Well, the book had potential, the part about her wanting to give up her immortal life was different, an approach I was not expecting and the consequence of this was probably the only twist I didn't see coming. I wish the opera related part of the story would've been worked a bit more, I think it would've give a lot to the story.