Review: The Vampire Next Door by Ashlyn Chase

The Vampire Next Door 
~Ashlyn Chase 


Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages 
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publish Dates: August 1, 2011
ISBN-10: 1402236638
ISBN-13: 978-1402236631 
ASIN: B0057H74ZA

From Goodreads:
In this third installment of Chase's lively, sexy, paranormal trilogy, we meet witch Morgaine, who is deathly afraid of the dark, and her vigilante vampire neighbor Sly, who has his reasons for hating sunlight. Sly needs Morgaine's magic to help heal a broken fang, but with further help, and sometimes hindrance, from the wacky apartment dwellers around them, they may become each other's last hope for a normal life...

There is a brownstone in Boston that seems to attract supernatural residents.  Case in point, Sly Flores - a young vampire who,as the story opens, has just attempted to stop a man from attacking a woman.  When Sly tries to bite the man's neck, however, his fang gets caught on the man's gold chain - problem is, it's not really gold, it's silver, and Sly loses his fang.  He heads straight to the brownstone and asks Morgaine, a witch, to heal his fang.  She does, which leads to spending time together and a hint of attraction between them.

Sly has only been a vampire for 26 years, and suddenly his maker comes looking for him.  He's bound and determined to make Sly his lover.  Sly is horrified - his maker is responsible for the death of his wife during childbirth.  Morgaine and her witchy cousin, Gwyneth, decide to help Sly get rid of his maker and perhaps help Sly with another problem he's having as well.

My thoughts:
I have enjoyed the other books in this light, fun series, but I had a hard time with The Vampire Next Door.  Morgaine and Sly's relationship went from cold to hot in a matter of moments; they were both getting advice about how to not be so shy around each other and then were suddenly in bed together, and not shy at all about it!  I didn't see any progression into their romantic relationship and  pretty much skimmed the sexy bits.   I liked them when they were doing "plot" things like trying to outmaneuver Sly's maker or attempting to find a "cure" for Sly's vampirism.

The other residents of the house were their usual quirky characters.  We do get a LOT of Morgaine's cousin Gwyneth in this book, and I have to be honest - she was very annoying.  I hate it when Southerners are portrayed as stupid, and Gwyneth is stereotypically written as a dumb Southern girl who makes/drinks moonshine and says "y'all" every three words.  If you've read the other books in the series, you'll be happy to see Merry and Jason in this book, they have some good things going on, and Roz and Konrad make an appearance too.  We also meet two new tenants who have secrets they're hiding.

There were a few surprising "matches" in The Vampire Next Door, so I'm curious about who's going to move into the "Love Shack" (formerly Sly's apartment) in the next book.

The Vampire Next Door is a humorous and sexy paranormal read; unfortunately I was too distracted by my annoyance with Gwyneth's character.  It can be read as a stand-alone, although the characters are more interesting if you know their background stories.

 My Rating:

Book received by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.