Review: Frostbitten by Charlotte Stein

Shy nurse Cora both dreads and lives for the moments she sees Zeke, an orderly at the hospital where she works. Zeke is too handsome, too compelling, too much, and seems totally unaware of Cora. But before she can bring herself to his attention, an explosion rips through the hospital Christmas party.

Zeke has noticed Cora—in fact, he’s so irresistibly drawn to her that he saves her from the explosion by turning her into a vampire, much to the jealousy and resentment of his partner, Merrick. Zeke hates being a vampire, and now that she’ll live, doesn’t want Cora to suffer his fate. If they can both resist the overwhelming instinct to bond, joining their bodies as Cora draws her maker’s blood, she might be able to return to her normal human life.

As Merrick uses every erotic trick to keep Zeke distracted from the blood passion, Cora becomes more and more drawn to both of her reluctant captors. And more and more happy to abandon her old life in exchange for an eternity with two hot immortal lovers. All she has to do is convince Merrick and Zeke that being a vampire isn’t all that bad.





Quite possibly the most restrained "hedonistic" vampires ever.

I thought for sure this would be a slam dunk.

à M̩nage
√ Vamps
√ Charlotte Stein

How could it go this wrong? HOWWWW???

Admittedly it's been awhile since I read a Charlotte Stein, but I just knew I was in for a smutfest of epic proportions; the kind that would leave my kindle kinda sticky. I was so looking forward to it too. Frostbitten is kind of smutty but the smut is mostly a product of Cora's thoughts rather than any actual grinding. I like tension if it's for the sake of relationship development but the relationship developing between these three is all based on something call a "fever". I usually like the fated/destined trope but I didn't like or connect with any of these characters I mean, if you can fight off your destiny for weeks when it's right under your nose, ripe for the taking is it really your fate?

Nevertheless, I would've found a way to get on board this "fever" deal had it been more like this.



But it felt more like this.




So yeah, kinda hokey. I might've been able to roll with the hokey had they gotten their sandwich on, but it just turned into a strange love triangle that reminded me of that Strokes song. Again, not what I bargained for and made me feel bad for Merrick because no one wants to be the third wheel, or in this case thrown over for a "fevered" RN. Not to worry, eventually things even out because "the fever" spreads and overtakes Merrick. It's airborne, I guess. It never gets explained why what's typically supposed to only happen to a vamp once happens to her and Merrick twice. 

Speaking of Merrick, he starts off as the mean vamp. The bad one. I like those. I mean, if you're going to be a bastard commit to it and give it 100% effort. He did until "the fever" struck and then he turned into emo vamp and even tried to commit suicide! WUT?




The story of how Cora ends up in their care is the standard 'I had to otherwise you'd DIE'. Not original but a classic nonetheless. I'm not put out by that; however, I am put off by the writing style. I'm not sure if it was an effort to establish Cora's persona or if Stein's style has evolved over time, but there was too much redundancy. Words are repeated two, three, four times. The same sentiment is expressed twice with slight modifications back to back. Over and over and over again. Probably a third of the story could've been excised and would've been better off for it, in my opinion.

The sex is so-so but by the time it happened I was mailing it in, so I'm probably not the best judge.

I can't recommend this but I can say opinions are varied and I would recommend reading other reviews before deciding.


A copy was provided by Netgalley.

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