Book lust

I went on kind of a tear on a yahoo group recently and bitched about how I sometimes feel that authors expect all reviewers to look for things to say to trash their books. Obviously, I disagree with this assessment, as evidenced by tonight.

Tonight I was vassilating between two books that I will start tomorrow. Both are paranormals. One is by an author I love. The other is by a new to me author who sent me an E-ARC of her September release. Being a series whore, I need to read the first book before I tackle the second. I was already leaning toward the new to me author, so I went looking for reviews of her first book, which I intend to read in preparation for this one.

The book incidentally, is Dark Thirst by Sarah Reinke. I knew nothing about it, except the fact that Ms. Reinke writes books that all sound very good. So I checked out reviews.

Sadly, the most recent was by Debra Ann MacGilivray, so I ignored that, and went on. And now I am excited to read this book because of the following things that I gleaned from the Amazon reviews:

• Beta hero. Mmm, I lurve me a good beta hero/alpha heroine dynamic. I know, that makes me a freak in the romance world, but anyone here reading this won’t be shocked by that revelation.

• The hero is deaf/mute. After my crush on Nick Andros from The Stand by Stephen King, I am all about the deaf-mute characters, because I think the struggles for communication are fascinating. And I am not deaf or mute, so my disability baggage won’t kick in every time the author does something of which I do not approve.
• Vampire mafia. How awesome is that?
• Did I mention virgin hero? Oh, sign me up.

I also think it’s awesome that this is an interracial romance, but quite honestly that’s just a side benefit. I am looking forward to a darkish paranormal, hoping for a strong heroine, and totally stoked about the virgin hero thing.

Now I just pray that this lives up to my expectations!