Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

No one knows the dark desires of the soul better than #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. In Guilty Pleasures, she introduces Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. Anita's small, dark, and dangerous. But when the city's most powerful vampire comes to her for help, Anita is faced with her greatest fear--a man capable of arousing in her a hunger strong enough to match his own...

"Why should it surprise me that I was alive?...

There on the right side of my neck was the real thing...

Tiny, diminutive fang marks. Nikolaos [had] contaminated me...

I bet she thought I'd be scared of her. She was right on that.

But I spend most of my waking hours confronting and destroying things that I fear. A thousand-year-old master vampire was a tall order, but a girl's got to have a goal."

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, book one) by Laurell K. Hamilton

Start date: December 18, 2014

End state: December 19, 2014

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Content warning: torture, sexual violence

The only reason the Anita Blake series made it on my reading challenge list was because of the rumors I had heard about the books. I’ve always been told that Laurell K. Hamilton writes graphic, detailed sex scenes. I was embarrassed the first time I ever read a story in which characters engaged in sexual acts, but I’ve come a long way since then. Now I love a well described sexual encounter and pray for them in the novels in which the characters have sizzling chemistry. I put the first book in the Anita Blake series on my list so I could try out the series to see if I liked it. After finishing the entire Hush, Hush series within the past three days (you heard read me right—I binged), I needed a satisfying sex scene to alleviate all that tension so I turned to the author I heard so much about. I won’t ruin the Hush, Hush series for anyone but if you’re looking for something steamy, you might want to look away from young adult novels. Silly me for not accounting for the target audience in my expectations of the books. Never again!

Moving on to Guilty Pleasures, this book didn’t feel like a guilty pleasure at all. I’m proud to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly. Anita Blake was just the right protagonist to restore my faith in the paranormal genre. She’s tough but not unrealistically tough; she never tried to take on a pack of vampires with nothing but her bare fists. She’s attractive—not mesmerizingly beautiful—and knows it but doesn’t feel any type of way if someone mentions her beauty. I’m glad she’s not another self-deprecating or conceited protagonist who all the paranormal creatures fall for for some unknown reason that won’t be revealed until late in the series (I’m looking at you, Southern Vampire Mysteries). She gets her ass handed to her often but she doesn’t complain about it to anyone. Her convictions are strong but they can be swayed by her loyalties to others. All in all, she seemed to be more similar to a real person (instead of a cliché) than most, if not all, of the paranormal books I’ve read.

I was a little disappointed that there were no sex scenes like I thought there would be but that doesn’t mean I was left unsatisfied. There are many sexual situations, which I liked, so this is not a book for young people to read. Unlike other books about vampires I’ve read, vampires weren’t wholly black or white. Hamilton’s vampires seemed to fall into gray areas. You know, like in real life how things are rarely merely good or bad. I felt that each character was unique and carried their own weight, proving they belonged to be there. (The only exception to that would be Catherine, who seemed to exist only to start the story but was necessary to keep Anita’s conviction going strong despite her lack of appearance in the rest of the novel.)

For once, there wasn’t a love triangle. Anita found herself attracted to all but one person and that was at the very beginning and end of the novel. If you think I wasn’t dreaming up some way in which Edward and Anita would go at, though, you’re sorely mistaken. The main story was a detective tale, a whodunit, if you will. I appreciated that Anita didn’t do anything overtly detective-y like snooping through people’s garbage or taking photos with a telescopic lens. The setting, characters, and actions helped ground the story in a believable world. It deserved the full five stars.