R E V I E W | The Dark Heroine: Dinner With A Vampire by Abigail Gibbs

 This book was recommended to me by a friend and as we have very similar reading tastes I was more than happy to give it a go!

The story follows 17 year old Violet Lee, the daughter of the British Shadow Defense Minister (this is actually pretty important to the story line) - who witnesses the brutal mass murder of 30 men, late one night in Trafalgar Square. As Violet turns to flee she is cornered by one of the murderer's, Kaspar Varn- a vampire prince. Rather than killing Violet and leaving her with the other bodies, Kaspar chooses to kidnap Violet and take her back to his castle/manor at Varnley - which with the authors directions and name drops of local Kent villages along the Thames Estuary, I have deduced that Varnley is within a stones throw from the village where I live, pretty cool.
The story then unfolds from there. Violet gets to meet Kaspar's family - the King, his siblings and friends. Begins to learn about vampires and other dark beings - you don't learn much though, and oh there are like 9 different dimensions - we are in number 2,  where all these different dark beings reside.
There is also a prophecy - the prophecy of The Dark Heroine's. From what I can gather the Heroine's are meant to prevent a war and restore balance to the dimensions. But that's all the information you get.
I really enjoyed the first half of this book - with Violets obvious disgust for the vampires and unwillingness to co-operate in anyway. But then there is one small indecent where Violet is kidnapped from her kidnappers - oh yes. She is drained to almost death, tortured and nearly raped. This I consider to be a fairly traumatic event.
Fairly soon after this event and while Violet is healing and coming to terms with what has happened to her, Kaspar sneaks in to Violets room one night after returning form a day hunting and feeds off of her. Like WTF!??!

"Come on, Girly, just a little drop of blood. I'm So hungry. You'll enjoy it."
I scowled, and thrashed about as he lay draped across me, pressing his crotch hard into my stomach.
"Kaspar, get off me!" I spat...
"If you scream, I swear I'll kill you, so I suggest you keep quiet," he muttered...
..."whats wrong with the donor stuff?"
..."It doesn't taste as good as your blood," he stated slowly as though it were obvious. 
..."please" he breathed.
His voice was so pleading, so desperate, like the piteous call of a starving child; and I whispered a word I should never even thought of:
"okay."

Then Kaspar feeds on Violet and leaves...Then Fabian - one of the other vampires we meet early on from the initial murders and sorta lives at Varnley, who also seems to have the total hots for Violet, comes in to her room as he heard noises and kisses her! (obviously there's a little build up to it) - ok the kiss I can kind of forgive and say yeah that's not too unlikely to happen, but the Kaspar feed...no, no freaking way would she allow that after almost being drained to death just because "I'm hungry" *vampire puppy dog eyes*
So the book lost me for a little while until I eventually drew back in.
There are a few little nuances that annoyed me through out this book, like Kaspar constantly through out the second half of this book calling Violet 'Girly'- okay every now and then but like every few sentences...shoot me! And some things I feel like the author could of explained more like what the vampire celebration of Ad Infintium was for, elaborate on the Dark Heroine's-whats the war about? Will it be the end of the dimensions? Just what?
And I really feel that this book would benefit from having an epilogue. The second installment is about a different Heroine so why not let the reader know: does Violet become vampire? Will there be an appearance of them both in the second book?

On a whole I did enjoy the book and it being the authors debut novel and having only been young her self when it was written, its not a bad book, could of done with a bit more scruitinising from the editor - that's what they are there for right?
A solid ✩✩✩'s