With a Roar and a Kiss, It Began 
 He is the last of his kind, the only full blood vampire left alive on the planet, and he is the leader of a small brotherhood of warriors who protect his threatened race from extinction at the hands of an unholy and de-souled army of lessers. He is Wrath, the biggest, baddest mother you never want to meet in a dark alley. He is the Blind King, but he is a king who refuses to rule. 
 Beth is a half-vampire, half-human female on the cusp of a transition into a creature she doesn't know exists. An orphan who was raised in foster homes, she is unprepared for the dark abyss of truth that will open its gaping maw at her feet and threaten to devour her. Only Wrath can save her, only Wrath can teach her of her people...only Wrath can love her. 
 Because he says so. 
 It is the book that spawned a popularity surge in a literary subgenre, that created a firestorm of fans and spun a thousand writers into similar directions. Long before Kindle, before I became a mindless, book-consuming beast, I picked up a red book in a dark bookstore with a racy title and fell into a world I had only heard rumblings of before. And I was lost. 
 It wasn't the vampires or other paranormal aspects - read them before. It wasn't the romance - come on, I live for romance and always have. It was the unique and utterly satisfying blend of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. It was the brothers themselves; those damned and damaged warriors each bearing the weight of their own personal crosses with honor and death and sex and booze and pulse-searing rap. It was the brilliant world and the complex, layered plots, too, but mostly it was the intensity of the emotions that each brother garnered just by being. 
 And it all started with Dark Lover. 
 I'm not going to sit here and attempt to write what I consider a typical review. I'm not going to go on and on about what the story was about, what worked, what didn't. I'm not going to hash out plot points or discuss story arcs. It's been done by people far more capable than I. All I'm going to say is that for me, Dark Lover is one of those books that transcends reading entertainment and becomes something tangible, something that makes willing suspension of disbelief seem nothing more than a trite catchphrase because there is no disbelief. 
 It started with this book and regardless of where the series has gone since, regardless of where it has yet to go, this book is the one book that I'll never criticize or critique. I'm just so glad I read it all those years ago, and am happy to have read it again. 
 It changed...everything. 
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 Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.