Blood Lust (Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy: Preternaturals Book 1)

A great start to the series

Really enjoyed this one. Thanks Ms Winters!

"Blood Lust" was a fun read because the characters feel so familiar from the first time we meet them. This works especially well for a novella collection, where we want to dive right into the story itself. An expansive an well-established world is bared, promising more sassy tales with interesting characters! Looking forward to reading more from Zoe Winters.

Really liked these books!!! Liked her stories and characters!! Please keep them coming!!! :)

The first one, Kept, has maybe the most interesting setting of the three, introducing therians (were animals, so not just cats and wolves, which would’ve been a bit awkward) to us and mixing it with sorcery. The protagonist Greta is a werecat – really, the house-cat cat, and as it’s told to us in the blurb she has a grim future unless she does something: “…whose tribe plans to sacrifice her during the next full moon. Her only hope for survival is Dayne, a sorcerer who once massacred most of the tribe.”

Kept had a lot of weaknesses in the beginning of the novella, mainly because it introduced such new concepts to the paranormal world, that when things weren’t properly explained when they were introduced, you already had imagined something of your own to fill the blanks, until they were told to be actually something very different. One example being this werecat thing. I seriously couldn’t first believe it was a normal cat, so I pictured a panther, until this was shattered a bit further down the story. Also I thought it was just a normal city, until it was made clear there’s a wall going around it.

Even though Kept has the most intriguing story of the three, it’s also the weakest one. The flow isn’t quite right – hard to explain really, but some of the things go too slow and then the things you expect to be major and written more about, are over so fast you don’t quite comprehend it even. This is an issue also in Claimed, the second novella in the book.

Claimed goes a bit more into the love child of all paranormal writers, vampires. However I do love the fact, that for once the protagonist female, Charlee, doesn’t want to be one, it’s quite refreshing and her attitude towards vampires and the life they lead seems a bit more healthy than what you usually see in these kind of stories.

I liked the beginning and middle of the novella more than I liked the ending. Not to be misunderstood: I loved the choice Charlee made, but the writing in the end just wasn’t as good. I guess the tournament was a hard one to write, but it felt very rushed for me. Especially the first round left me disappointed, since there was so much that could’ve been done with it.

Compared to Kept it was better with the storytelling, but lost a bit in the originality and the rushed end.

In the third novella, Mated, Winters binds together some lose ends from the first story and I think it actually makes up for some of the bad things in Kept. On the other hand it takes some of the good feelings from Claimed away without really explaining why. Ok, it was shortly given some explanation to Paul’s behavior, but it seemed so out of character compared to what he was like in claimed. Also the relationship between Charlee and Anthony doesn’t seem that deep anymore, and that makes me feel a bit sad about them.

The female lead, Jane though is very much as she was in Claimed and the transition to tell her tale was very smooth. And I like how Winters shifted the view of werewolves very naturally without breaking the world introduced in the previous novellas.

Having already read the blurb for the next part of the series it’s clear some of the stuff in Mated are there to lay some groundwork for Save My Soul, but it’s not forcibly added, but seems like genuine and meaningful part of the story. That might be the thing I like most about these stories: when you come to the end of the story, you still get the same feeling about being in the same world, and characters are not forgotten, even though some might have changed.

Anyway, I consider Mated to be the best one of the three stories in Blood Lust, with very fluid writing and Winters not being afraid to get her characters to do hard choices. She makes them more real, and not all goody goodies. Also mated doesn’t have that rushed feeling in any part of it.

One thing that did bother me a bit, was that all of the three woman protagonist were mostly presented as victims who needed to be saved by a man. Then again the stories would’ve been very different if that wasn’t the case.

For all you who like to read paranormal stories, I full-heartedly recommend these into your to-be-read pile.

The cover on this is seductive, giving you a sample of what to expect. What the cover can't tell you is the myriad of characters it contains. Blood Lust is three novellas combined, comprising of Kept, Claimed and Mated. All three novellas flow together really well and the set of stories entwine with each other.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the characters and all their guises. There's a healthy mix - werecat (cat therian), were, vamp, sorcerer and some humans. I love the storyline which seamlessly melded fantasy and everyday life. The stories are humorously told in places, with tangeable emotions from the characters.

There are some really well done hot sex scenes in this -not overly explicit- the expectation of this is built up through the book and in each of the novellas. I like the explanation of why vampires don't have mirrors, this is without a doubt the best explanation I've read to date, it actually makes sense, and adds another element to vampires that doesn't appear anywhere else I've seen.

Blood Lust overall has similar themes in each of the three parts. A human runs from something (or someone) and meets their proverbial knight in shining armor....then has to trust in that person, whilst going against everything they thought they knew. My favorite out of the three is Claimed, which has vampire characters and humans as the main storyline, alongside characters from Kept. It's not an easy choice to make though, as they're all really addictive and I couldn't put them down once I'd started. I'm looking forward to reading Save My Soul...hope the wait won't be too much longer!

Great trilogy! I love reading paranormal romances. This had just the right amount of suspense, intrigue and romance. It was very easy to get involved with the stories. The characters were not too "over the top". Very believable as much as vampires and werewolves can be. Perfect amount of sensual undertones throughout. I like to read a book that has a little bit of rawness to it! The read left me wanting more. I only wished the stories had been longer!