Review: Blood of a Promise

By: Leeah Taylor

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Independent

Pages: 174

Release date: Jan 31, 2020

Forever hinges on a moment. A heartbeat. A kiss. But how often in forever does love appear? Is it as ephemeral as sakura blossoms on a breeze or is it steadfast as the inevitablity of death?

For Lucien Frost, the vampire king of Sterling, Georgia, love is made flesh in the brilliance of Chelsea Greaves’s smile. He can see her longing every moment their eyes meet, every accidental brush of polite interaction. But, she is the Witch Regent of Sterling.

Witch laws forbid the union of vampires and witches,and the punishment is death by hanging or burning of the witch, and the literal removal of the vampire lover’s heart.

As they decide that “witches be damned”, they play a dangerous game as they attempt to conceal their doomed romance from with witch elders that would gladly see Chelsea damned for falling in love with a vampire.

Will Chelsea and Lucien be able to love freely or will she found herself with a moose around her neck like her mother before her?

Blood of a Promise is told in third person from Lucien and Chelsea’s point of view. There is a time jump of seven years between chapter 1 and chapter 2, but the main POV characters have an established relationship that spans 60 years before the novel started. We don’t get to watch how Lucien and Chelsea fall in love only bear witness to how they love another. It’s a refreshing perspective in the paranormal romance genre to have two main characters inexplicably in love with one another with a long standing foundation to stand on.

The conflict of course, is that this love is forbidden only by the council of elders since it appears that there are many witches and vampires that have chosen to live and live together in secret. The paranormal elements of the setting are in the background with only a mention here and there to remind us that Lucien and Chelsea are not human.

I had a sense of deja Vu reading this novel like I had read and reviewed it before. Perhaps, it was a sense of empathy for characters that knew what they wanted and who they loved that made it easy to connect. It is easy root for a romance that isn’t tainted by misdeeds on the part of the lovers. There was no doubt in Lucien and Chelsea of their feelings for each other just of how they keep each other out of reach of the Witch executioner.

Overall, this was fairly fast-paced and the problem was bound in the more mundane chains of duty. For those looking for more magic and blood, please keep in mind that this is a beginning of a series. This romance is forbidden and we know that it’s the sort of thing that tastes the sweetest. I look forward to reading the rest of the series to see how this ends. I did not read the teaser chapter for the next book that was included at the end since I don’t want to be left hanging.

Thank you to Story Origin for providing me a reviewer copy!

4 of 5