FANGS FOR NOTHING – Erin McCarthy & Kathy Love
The Impalers , Book 2
Berkley Sensation (Trade Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-425-25744-9
July 2013
Paranormal Romance

Present Day New Orleans, Louisiana

If you have plans to read the first book (THE FANGOVER) in this series, know that reading any further in this review will reveal a spoiler. While I do suggest reading THE FANGOVER first to get the full flavor of these vampires—pun intended—I didn't, and still managed to enjoy this second book. So, now that you're warned…

The Impalers are a local club band made up of a group of friends who are vampires. After the wedding of another band member, things go awry, and everyone one wakes up with a hangover and no memory of anything after the reception. Not only that, they find themselves in awkward positions (some including handcuffs) in the bride's playroom…the bride happens to be a dominatrix. The band's lead guitarist, Drake Hanover, was born an English lord and became a pirate and vampire. He awakens somehow paired up with the reception's caterer, an attractive normal human who proves to be a likable Cajun lady who knows what to do with alligators.

Johnny Malone, drummer and singer, recently faked his death in order to rid himself an overly persistent mortal female, but now the Paris based organization, the Vampire Alliance, has sent a representative, Lizette Chastain, to investigate his death and confiscate all his possessions. They have already seized his bank account. Lizette is a beautiful young woman (if a vampire who has lived a couple of centuries can be called young) who is all business. She finds Johnny attractive in a slightly immature way, but life has left her wary and untrusting.

FANGS FOR NOTHING is mainly about the developing relationships of the two couples named above. There is plenty of salty language and explicit sex, but it also has humor and engaging rocky roads to love. If the plot is otherwise rather thin at first, they eventually set out to solve the mystery of what happened and why…and who was responsible. I wish I had read THE FANGOVER first; I would have had a better understanding of these vampires and their lives. Plus, there are a lot of characters, some of whom starred in the earlier work.

Alternating chapters feature one and then the other of the couples, and it seems the authors each took one couple of her own to write about but got together to integrate the stories. However it was done, it worked. For hot vamps and an assorted, sometimes zany, supporting cast, give these books a go.

Jane Bowers