In the mists of the Scottish Highlands is a university where vampire students study alongside humans.
Rebecca Charity is a vampire hunter undercover at the university, searching for the mysterious Book of Blood and Roses, a lost compendium of ways to kill vampires. If she finds it, she’ll be one step closer to avenging her parents, who were slain by those creatures of the night.
But when Rebecca arrives, she finds something unexpected: a coffin. Her new roommate is Aliz Astra, scion of one of the most powerful vampire families… and the most beautiful woman Rebecca has ever met.
The maddeningly gorgeous Aliz is everything that Rebecca has always hated, but also everything she ever wanted, and now Rebecca doesn’t know if she wants to kiss or kill her.
When Aliz rescues her from a vampire attack one moonlit night, she accidentally makes Rebecca her familiar. Now, they must work together to break the curse, but as they get closer to solving the mystery, Rebecca and Aliz get closer, too.
But can a vampire hunter ever fall in love with a vampire?

There’s a lot of vampire-related romantasy about at the moment, and I was a little wary of yet another – what can this author bring to an overcrowded part of the bookshelf?

Annie Summerlee answers that easily: Scottish pragmatism!

Heroine Rebecca is young and naive as she sets out on her mission to find the long-lost Book of Blood and Roses, fiercely anti-vampire for understandable reasons, but willing to go undercover at a ‘mixed’ university to achieve her goal. Vampires are a known quantity in this world to some extent (albeit not as much as ‘True Blood’, for example), and both sides are seeking to set foundations for peace and work together moving forward. However, as with any hostile situations with very differing viewpoints there are extremists on both sides, and Rebecca goes from being intently pro-Human to understanding just what it means to move in vampire spaces.

It was so refreshing to read an urban supernatural fantasy set closer to home than the more common American shores! Rebecca and her schoolmates are all very grounded young people (even if not so young in years) and the increasing threats are more relatable than they might otherwise be as a result. Sharing a bedroom with a fellow student that you really don’t get on with is one thing; but if you’re in a bed and she’s in a coffin? The day-to-day reality of living in such a world allows both Rebecca and the reader to care as the quest for a lost book becomes less theoretical and more life-and-death.

It did strike me that the ‘romance’ aspect of the book features so heavily in the marketing. While it is absolutely present, the escalating mystery was far more interesting to me. We spend all of our time with Rebecca after all, and she never seems to stop! From mandatory lessons to walking the maze beneath the campus, mapping forgotten paths and encountering strange spells… her relationship with Aliz was intriguing, but they’re just as much fun as an ‘odd couple’ forced together. The romance isn’t simple, as neither is sure whether Rebecca is drawn to Aliz because of her vampire abilities, adding a whole extra dimension of difficulty to two women discovering themselves. A straightforward romantasy this is not.

Nor is the book shallow: issues of prejudice are clearly drawn, plus that of class and just what effect the ageless power of certain vampires would have in society. These girls aren’t stupid, and at times it seems as if the adults are the ones truly set in their ways, while our heroines learn to see what truly matters outside of preconceived ‘norms’ of their respective upbringing.

A fast-paced, engrossing adventure with complex relationships that slowly come alive.