A Review for Kiss of Vemon (Blood Vemon #1) by Ilsa Morgan

Posted by Guest Reviewer Melanie

Published Date: October 18th, 2011

Finished Date: November 8th, 2011

Source: For Review

Format: Kindle

Pages: Unknown

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The Blurb from Goodreads: William Hamilton has spent his life cursing his fate, biding his time, and working on the science he's sure will free him and his childhood friend, Liv, from the curse of living as vampires. When Liv tries to reach out to her humanity and winds up tortured for a century, she puts the idea of physically changing out of her head and convinces William that they should embrace their eternal teenager-hood and go...back to high school. It's the last thing William wants...but he'll do anything for Liv, including facing an entire human high school of blood-filled students, poetry classes, and teenage hormones. But then he meets Bridget Greene, and he realizes that if he had a heart, it would be thumping out of his chest every time she got close. He's seriously tempted to go back into hiding, but Bridget's infuriating sexiness is intoxicating, and he can't stay away.But Bridget isn't all that she seems. And William realizes that a few centuries as a cold immortal are nothing compared to Bridget's secrets and the secrets of her friends, who keep popping up and complicating his existence. When her life is in danger, William has to decide what side he's on and how far he's willing to go for the only person he's ever loved...even if what he needs to do could push her away forever

The Review: William and Liv have known each other all of their very long lives and have been vampires for a very long time, William accepts his lot in life but Liv has a harder time dealing with their existence and often falls into bouts of depression wanting to at least be able to rest and sleep. William does everything in his power to help her, turning to science and alchemy in an attempt to reverse the vampirism or at least give them some sort of semblance of a normal life like eating and sleeping but to no avail. When Liv finds another vampire who offers what she is seeking Will sees no alternative other than to let her try and she enters a self-imposed coma like state. Over 100 years pass as William tries to find a cure and take care of the comatose Liv, the world has changed so much, gone through so much and when Liv finally does wake up she comes to the conclusion that they should embrace this life instead of living half-lives as monsters. So they decide to enrol in high school where on the first day William meets Bridget. He thought he knew love, thought that he had loved Liv but not this way, he had never felt this way before. There was something enticing about her, she was everything, she made him feel, he could even smell her after all these years of nothing, she was pure sunshine to him and he wanted her more than anything. There is something about her though, she seems to know about him, seems wary of him and at the same time hiding something from him and when William finds out what is really going on with Bridget it is going to change his life forever and there are no lengths that he won’t go to, To make sure she stays safe.

Hmmm, this is a tough one to rate for me because there were parts in the book that I really liked and parts that were just ok. The actual book is split up into parts and for the first part of the book we discover who William and Liv are, their origins, the dynamics of their relationship, the people who they meet that would help William in his endeavours and ultimately who led Liv to go into a coma. Then we get Williams life as he goes more than a century alone, what ideas he’s having, how the world is changing and how he’s benefitting from the modern age but also how lonely and isolated he is. This part was just ok for me although I did understand the need for it in the book because the relationship with Liv needed to be defined and why he was doing what he was and how he got there etc. The thing is it just wasn’t for me, it was depressing and I was losing interest even though it was a major factor in the plot. I tend not to read stories with dated backstories or historical because it’s not my thing and there wasn’t much dialogue either and I like conversations, it was like a really long Will monologue and when it wasn’t about Will it was moping Liv and she bugged me too but I guess different personalities in those days because as soon as we got to present day I really started to get into it. When he meets Bridget we saw a new side to him and it was sweet, I loved how he pursued her, their conversations, the time they spent together, everything. Until the inevitable happened  and he went back to the Will of old, immersing himself in science again and isolating himself. Then the book got slow again and it was just ok, then the climax was good and I liked it again but the ending seemed to go on forever when it could very well have been the start of the next book instead.

What I would have liked was more of the relationship stuff, there was too much science and solitude in it for me, a huge chunk at the beginning and in the middle . . . it just brought it all down to a go slow and I need something paced. As I said, I like dialogue between characters, happiness, love, soul-mates, a little bit of strife and while we got that in some parts it didn’t have continuity so I was bored, interested, bored, interested.

On a positive note, the plot was interesting and I liked where it went. I liked the characters, well the modernised versions of them and who they got together with. I was loving the Liv/Jax thing which had potential if he didn’t keep running off and if they were made to spend time with each other and I wanted more happiness for Will because he always put others before himself but always seemed to sabotage his own happiness. So for me half of the book wasn’t my thing whilst the other half was but don’t take my word for it, give it a go yourself because sometimes I’m a little book prejudiced *cough* historical, years ago stuff *cough*.