by Valerie du Sange
Jo Martin is off to France to start her dream job showing horses for two aristocratic brothers at Château Gagnon. She quickly falls for David, the charismatic and deeply hot younger brother, but unsettling questions arise.
The older brother, Henri, the Marquis de la Motte, is steady where his younger brother is impetuous. His great work is developing products for his vampire brethren, making them safer as they live among humans.
Jo is caught between the brothers, uncertain of what is real and what is myth. When a young woman, a guest at the Château goes missing, all Jo knows is that she can't trust anyone.
Vampires. Scorching hot sex. Pastries. French aristocrats. This is the world of Unbitten.
Please be advised adult content
Kindle Edition, 2nd Edition, 340 pages
Published: November 3rd 2012 by Fanny Bancroft Books, Inc.
ASIN: B00A13YJE4
Series: Fifth World #1
Review
Jo, an american, goes to a french village, working as trainer and rider of a prized show horse. She gets caught up into one of the brothers. Brothers, sexy vampires, and owners of the Chateau Gagnon, David & Henri De La Motte. Henry, the older of the two, makes products to sell to vampires. An over seas business man wants to steal his products and destroy him altogether. The younger bother, David, love to entertain people at the Chateau to feed his needs. He loses control one day, and makes a mess for the bothers.
The POV changes through the characters. making it easy to see what is going on in each or their minds. Excellent writing style, very easy to read. Flows nicely, captivates you to the end. Refreshing vampire story. The sex scenes were written well into the story. There were no awkward jumping into it. It wasn't too much, just the right amount, and nicely done. The Characters, were very complex, and their histories were very interesting and intriguing. The ending did leave a lot of open questions, so I am hoping for a sequel to this one. I would LOVE to read it.
5 stars
Interview with Valerie du Sange
1. Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? What inspired you to write your first book?
I was one of those kids scribbling away on stories instead of doing my homework. I feel really lucky about that--I know so many people who search and search, trying to figure out what kind of work they can be passionate about. I’ve known since I was in kindergarten.
I wrote my first vampire book on a dare. A friend said she didn’t think I could do it convincingly so I set out to prove her wrong. Readers will have to be the judge!
2. How do you develop your plots and characters? Do you use any set formula?
I’m a pretty dedicated seat-of-my-pants writer, so no formulae for me or even much planning, at least in the beginning. I start with a scene, usually. A place. And characters wander in and start doing stuff, and I follow along observing….
3. What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?
Well, for sure people will give different answers to this one! The first thing I want from a book is to get sucked into its world. The writing style can be simple or fancy but it has to keep me believing in the world and its characters, and curious about what’s going to happen.
A big bonus for me is getting some kind of insight, where I’m reading and nodding and thinking that I hadn’t thought of that before, and also when the events in the book are moving and I make an emotional connection with the characters, and feel happy/sad/whatever right along with them.
4. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
I’m not sure what this says about me (lol) but the innocent young woman is definitely the most difficult to write. It’s so easy to make her TSTL, or too prickly, or too something.
5. Can you share a little of your current work/projects with us?
I’m about a third of the way through the third book in the Fifth World series. And thinking about doing some short stories set in the same world with the same characters, if I can figure out a way to do it that would be satisfying to the reader. Sometimes readers don’t have time to commit to a whole novel, so I want to give shorts a whirl.
6. In Twitter Fashion use 140 characters or less, sum your book for us.
Vampires? No! Really? Yes. They’re rich, they’re French, and I’ve totally fallen for them. Make that one of them.
7. I always must ask, If you could pick an actor to portray your Two main characters on the big screen who would it be and why?
David would be Leonardo DiCaprio, because who’s more charming than Leo? Anyone would fall for him, right?! Jo would be played by Anna Kendrick, who I think could play that confusing combination of confident uncertainty Jo displays. And as for Henri, I’d love to see Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the role. Sure, he’s a little young to play someone over 200 years old, but to me he seems like the most decent and loving person on earth, which is how I like my romantic leads.
8. Do you have any strange writing habits?
I eat bags of prunes. :)
9. What is something you hope to accomplish before you die?
I really really want to travel to India and hang out with some elephants. Sort of obsessed with them.
10. If you could have any accent for anywhere in the world, what would you choose?
French, of course! If I could have conversations in France and have no one guess I’m not French I would die happy. Never gonna happen...
Follow Author Valerie du Sange
Teaser/Excerpt
(from Chapter 5 of Unbitten)
David meanwhile stepped through the main doorway of the Château, out onto the terraced stone steps, and looked up at the night sky. The moon was not much more than a fingernail, so the stars were visible, billions of them, with the whitish drift of the Milky Way winding through them. The air was crisp.
David was hungry.
He had just finished a lovely dinner made by their exceptional cook, duck in some kind of sauce, he hadn’t paid much attention. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy filling his stomach—he was French, being indifferent to food was an impossibility—but other hungers, to David, meant so much more. Way in the back of his mind, he was becoming a little bit concerned. Not that long ago, his need to drink blood was occasional. He loved it, he looked forward to it, but it was not ruling his life the way it was now.
It had felt to him lately as though he was terrifically bored, tired of listening to Angélique drone on about accounts and profit margins, sick of Henri talking about his synthetic blood and stupid bandages and saving all of vampire-kind, had it with the inescapable pattern of getting up every night and going through the motions of eating meals and being charming and taking care to look good.
The truth was, David was a little depressed. And the only thing that gave him anything to look forward to was his nightly snack. It was the one time when his body was alive, throbbing, humming, looking for release. When nothing else mattered.
And the only way to get that release was to sink his fangs into a woman’s flesh, and drink, and drink, and drink.
If David had been a different sort of person, or even a different sort of vampire, he might have tried to figure out what was going on, or how to make his life more fulfilling. But he was not, and he did not.
He knew that he could stroll down to Henri’s lab and Henri would be more than happy to give him some of that synthetic dreck he was making down there. But David had three problems with Hemo-Yum. First, the taste was sort of off. It was like a wine that was not quite ready to drink. Sure, you could get it down, it didn’t make you gag or anything, but was it delicious? No.
Second, David did not want to give Henri the satisfaction. It made him feel...dependent. Which made him shudder.
Third, and most important, the delivery system for the blood was almost as crucial to his pleasure as the blood itself. Just as a heroin addict comes to love needles, to worship the tubing he ties his arm off with and the spoon he cooks his gunk in, so David adored female flesh. He loved the flash of power he felt when his fangs shot out. He loved brushing back a woman’s hair from her neck, and the sight and smell and touch of her throbbing artery.
And the feeling of plunging his fangs into that neck and drinking from that artery? It launched him into space, into the infinite, his entire body pulsing along with the woman’s heart, pulsing with a kind of bliss that he could find no other way.
Yes, sometimes there was lovemaking beforehand. And during. And after. And oh yes, that part was not to be dismissed, not at all. But to consider sex without the biting? Meh.
One thing separated David from a lot of other vampires—he didn’t just want to possess the woman, sexually and arterially. He wanted her to want him to do it. He wanted her to cry out with pleasure when he bit her, to moan, to beg. He wanted, as he satisfied himself, to be the object of surpassing desire.
Not like that village idiot Pierre, who just wanted to get his wick wet and snack on whomever he could scare into a lonely alleyway.
So, here he was, on a calm October night, his desire growing by the minute as he stood on his front steps looking at the stars.
That American woman, he thought. It’s her fault I’m so hungry tonight. Just having a woman—any woman—nearby, whom he would be seeing every day, triggered his need for attention. He wanted her desperately. Not because Jo was Jo, but simply because she existed. He wanted her to look for him, to wait for him, to blush whenever he was in the same room with her.
He wanted to smell her excitement, to see her breathless expression when finally he deigned to pay her a visit.
This was how David felt whenever a human woman was near. The women believed that his attention meant he really cared for them, and they reveled in being the object of his intense desire—they had no idea how long the line was that they had just joined. A line that stretched back for centuries, and was almost always at least two or three deep at any given moment.
He allowed himself to fantasize for just an instant about biting Jo and sucking on her neck. There was something about her energy, her excitement, that had gotten to him. He wondered whether she liked sex and was any good at it. Henri would kill me, thought David with a sigh. And I need her to ride my horses.
What about that single woman staying in the cottage? he wondered. She’s a little old for my taste, but God, I have to drink. Now.
And with that thought, he trotted off towards the row of stone cottages some distance from the Château, each filled with paying guests, or, depending on your point of view, filled with appetizers, main course, and dessert.
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