Review: Lover Eternal by J. R. Ward

Title: Lover Eternal
Author: J. R. Ward
Genre: vampire romance
Grade: B+

Summary: This second installment of the Black Dagger Brotherhood features Rhage, a vampire with movie star good looks and a literal beast inside him, who falls in love with Mary Luce, a woman who is dying of leukemia.

The Good: This book was cruising along happily until about chapter 48 or so, and I was loving it. Rhage is a fun character, the type of romance novel hero who appeals to me. I loved how he managed to not creep me out at all with his interest in Mary, and I was fascinated by the struggles he had to endure with his inner beast. And though I’ve read reviews where people have complained that Mary’s not a strong character, I liked her a lot. I empathized with her, and I thought her reactions were mostly realistic. Also, for the most part, the subplots in this one were juggled nicely. I am especially intrigued by John, a young vampire we get introduced to, and I can’t wait to read more about him. Also, Ward succeeded in making me want to read Zsadist’s book, although I’m annoyed that she succeeded too well. And in this book, we get into the head of one of her villains, which I liked quite a bit, since there was no redeeming the guy but I could see what had gone wrong with him and I felt sad that he’d ended up in the position he was in.

The Bad: Mostly, like I said, this was very good. Then we got to the end. I hated the end. It resolved the main romance (albeit with the aid of the Scribe Virgin, who I actively hated in this book), but there were a couple of plot threads left dangling, clearly in an attempt to make me pant for the third book. I really didn’t like how Ward manipulated me, and thus I’ve decided this is deserving of a B+ rather than the A I was going to give it.

Also, though Ward does do a little better with her villains, about halfway through the book, I found myself hoping a Lesser would show up named Mr. T. Because that would amuse me.