Review: Interview with the Kevin by Mark Lesney

Danton is a 1200-year old vampire, blinded by the Medieval Church, who makes his life as a paranormal romance novelist. He writes about a vampire detective and “pretends” to his fans to be a vampire himself. But book sales are down because he has been without love for over 30 years and just doesn’t have that spark of romance left in him. Until he meets Kevin, a disbelieving young man, desperate for a job, who is brought in by Danton’s agent to try to lighten up his life and heat up his prose.

This was a really interesting vampire tale and when Danton began telling his backstory I got completely absorbed in it and would read the hell out of that thing as a full length novel.

If you’re coming into Interview with the Kevin looking for romance, you may find that this is not your jam, but chuck that out the gothic window of Danton’s mansion, because Danton’s story itself was a great read. I didn’t feel like I got too strong of a handle on Kevin, and this was not really his tale to tell. I would have liked more of him though and if I had gotten as much dimension out of him as I did Danton I would be throwing more hearts at this one.

It seems that Kevin may be the key to Danton getting his mojo back and I liked reading about Danton getting pulled out of his comfort zone by the effervescent Kevin. Danton’s natural snobby side (from literal centuries of experience and knowledge) were challenged by Kevin and I appreciated how the author wrote those scenes. While Danton wasn’t necessarily wrong about the great differences in intellect and experience between them, he didn’t come off as intentionally arrogant, rather more like he was looking for an excuse to not let the young man get too close.

Getting too close brought back the potential for emotions and Danton found those way too painful given his heartbreaking history, but I don’t think Kevin is one to give up. While the ending was a little abrupt and I can’t really call it an HEA or even an HFN, it did read to me like there could be a lot more story to tell and I would definitely be interested in reading it from both the MC’s perspectives.

**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**