Review:
It's technically not necessary to have read the first book in the series before this one, although there are a lot of character cameos that will have more impact if you've read it.
Amelia Collins is a successful accountant who's working with a stressful client during the tail end of tax season. Making time for herself isn't exactly a priority right now, but she still wants to make an effort to be there for family events, like her cousin's upcoming wedding. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of joking about having a boyfriend when her mom was poking her, again, about her single status, and for some reason her entire family took her seriously.
Although she at least tells her brother the truth, she can't quite bring herself to come clean to her parents, which means finding herself a fake boyfriend. Except Amelia hasn't dated in ages, and she's not going to ask one of her colleagues. Her best option seems to be the random hot guy with amazing blue eyes she accidentally ran into on the way to a family get-together. He's got a great sense of humor and, surprisingly, he seems to know a couple of her brother's friends. When he nervously admits to her that he's a renegade vampire, she figures it's another one of his jokes.
Except it isn't. Reginald (Reggie) Cleaves is proud of himself for having told Amelia the truth so soon during their arrangement. He's amazed at how well she takes it, but who is he to look a gift horse in the mouth? His and Amelia's fake dating arrangement will hopefully give him a chance to lose the Collective, a group of vampires who want to kill him because of a fire he supposedly started a century ago. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Amelia's gorgeous and maybe attracted to him as well.
I had trouble believing the fake dating premise just typing it out - it might have made more sense if Amelia had known that Reggie knew friends of her brother's earlier, but she only found out as she was giving him her phone number. But if you can get past the whole "asking a hot but weird complete stranger to be your fake date" thing, this is a fun "opposites attract" read.
Amelia's the kind of person who can only take time for herself if she can convince herself that there's some purpose to it other than taking some time for herself. She takes her work seriously and is kind of hurt that her parents don't seem to understand her love for her job the way they understand her lawyer brother's love for his.
Then there's Reggie, who also doesn't really understand what she does but for some reason still enjoys hearing her talk about it. At the same time, he doesn't want her to work herself to death and encourages her to take breaks and does his best to make her laugh whenever he can. She can't help but be attracted to how comfortable he seems to be in his own skin - true, his fashion sense is more than a bit weird, but he also genuinely doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks.
Reggie and Amelia were an enjoyable couple to read about, and I got a kick out of Reggie discovering a love of bullet journaling (complete with stickers, multi-colored pens, and time spent in a bullet journaling discussion group). Levine's writing was delightful, and I found myself smiling through a good chunk of the book.
That said, I noticed some sloppiness with the vampiric details. For example, during a part where Amelia and Reggie were out in the snow, she snuggled into him and noted his "unexpected warmth" (229), despite the fact that every single other mention of his body temperature emphasized how cold or cool he was. Then there was the shed they entered, which Reggie noted must be abandoned since he was able to enter it without problems. It occurred to me later, that according to the rules Levine set up, he'd essentially risked his life (undead existence, whatever) entering the shed, since another part established that, while vampires could technically enter dwellings uninvited, their insides would spontaneously explode.
The villains in this book were somehow even more ridiculous than the ones in the first book, to the point that I had trouble taking them even a little bit seriously, no matter how worried Reggie seemed to be about being tracked down by them. Also, they were ridiculously easy to defeat.
All in all, despite some minor issues this was a fun read, and I look forward to whatever else Levine publishes.
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