Wild Hunger by Chloe Neill

 

In the first thrilling installment of Chloe Neill’s spin-off to the New York Times bestselling Chicagoland Vampires series, a new vampire will find out just how deep blood ties run.

Some believed that Elisa Sullivan, as the only vampire child ever born, had all the luck. But the magic that helped bring her into the world left her with a dark secret. Shifter Conner Keene, the lone son of North American Central Pack Apex Gabriel Keene, is the only one she trusts with it. But she’s a vampire and the daughter of a Master and a Sentinel, and he’s prince of the Pack and its future king….

When the assassination of a diplomat brings old feuds to the fore again, Elisa and Connor must choose between love and family, and between honor and obligation, before Chicago disappears forever.

Wild Hunger (Heirs of Chicagoland, book one) by Chloe Neill

Start date: August 18, 2021

End date: August 19, 2021

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I really thought I was going to dislike this book. I put off reading the spin-off to the Chicagoland Vampires series because I was disappointed that that series ended. I didn’t want to read about the child of Merit and Ethan Sullivan (that should not have existed!). I wanted more stories with Merit and the gang. I grew to love her character, and I didn’t see how I could enjoy a story that took place in her world but didn’t involve her.

After reading quite a few not-so-great paranormal romance/urban fantasy books, I felt like I needed a palate cleanser. Enter Wild Hunger. I already liked one series by the author, so I figured I’d finally give the spin-off a try. At the very least, if I didn’t like it, I would have other books on my reading challenge list to give a chance to.

Elisa Sullivan is an anomaly. She’s a born vampire, created when a spell meant to help defeat a dragon bound her to her mother (and possibly more). Her parents Ethan Sullivan and Caroline “Merit” Merit are somewhat American superstars. As Master and Sentinel of Cadogan House respectively, they’ve fought battles and kept the peace in Chicago since well before Elisa was born. Big shoes to fill, right? Side note: I liked this stance on aging parents that Elisa brought up. It rung true for me as someone who’s lost a parent.

Neither had aged since I’d been born; they looked barely older than me. Humans usually found that weird, but to me it just was. They were my parents, and they looked the way they looked. Wasn’t it weirder to have parents who looked a little different with each month and year that passed? (Neill 23)

Because of reasons we’ll get into, Elisa decides to leave Chicago for Paris for college. This story begins with Elisa returning to Chicago to attend peace talks amongst the European vampire houses. She’s working a year of armed service to Maison Dumas, the vampire house affiliated with the college she graduated from. Chicago being her hometown, Elisa has homefield advantage and this means that when the French delegates need to travel to the peace talks, Elisa is conscripted to guard them. So far, so good, right? Wrong.

Elisa has been hiding something about herself that threatens to be outed if she returns to Chicago. She believes part of the Egregore, a magical being sparked into existence by an evil sorceress named Sorcha that was forged into the form of a dragon to take over Chicago, was bound to her spirit when she was bound to Merit. This “monster,” as she calls it, is angry, and it attempts to take control of Elisa the closer she gets to Chicago and her mother’s katana that contains the remainder of the Egregore. A side effect of the monster’s possession of Elisa seems to be a voracious bloodlust and glowing red eyes, which is not normal for vampires in this universe. How neither of her parents has noticed or commented on her real-world red-eye effect growing up is beyond me.

There’s one person who knows at least part of Elisa’s secret: Connor Keene, prince of the North American Central Pack. His father is the Apex of the shapeshifter pack, and Connor is the presumed successor with all the responsibilities that entails. There’s also a prophecy mentioned in the Chicagoland Vampires series involving Elisa and Connor, but I digress…When they were teens, Elisa’s monster took over when a mugger hurt her best friend, Lulu Bell (daughter of Merit’s best friend, Mallory, and Catcher Bell), and Connor witnessed her in action. He has kept her secret all this time.

Back to the peace talks. After the first big event where all the supernatural creatures show off their powers like the opening ceremony of the Olympics, they’re hardly peaceful. The fairies bust in to accuse the vampires of conspiring to take control of Chicago. The Master of Casa Cordona, Tomas Cordona, alleges Ethan’s use of shapeshifters as security for the event is proof that his allegiance lies with them instead of the vampires. Meanwhile, the fairy queen’s consort, Ruadan, shows a strange attraction to Elisa. It’s a hot mess.

Then there’s a house party at Cadogan House where all the supernatural creatures (but mostly just vampires) mingle. Being a good diplomat, Elisa promptly leaves her French delegates to fend for themselves while she messes around in her childhood home. To be fair, they tell her she can have the night off. Elisa has fun for once chatting with old and new friends until she finds Lulu’s shapeshifter ex-boyfriend, Riley, covered in blood standing over top of Tomas’s headless body. He’s bewildered about how he got there or exactly what happened but to the partygoers, he looks like the guilty party seeing as how Tomas had yelled at him earlier in the night over an alleged rudeness.

            Despite the vampire houses being barred from involving themselves in any crimes the Ombudsman deal with, Elisa takes it upon herself to investigate. The Ombudsman believes it’s an open-and-shut case; Elisa believes in Riley’s innocence. She eventually partners with Theo Martin, one of the Assistant Ombudsman, to further pursue this. She concocts a rather clever explanation for how she should be allowed to do this when she’s inevitably caught:

Yes, I was Ethan and Merit’s daughter, and I’d lived in Cadogan House for most of my life. But I wasn’t officially a Cadogan vampire. I’d been born into the House, so I hadn’t been officially Commended into it—the process through which Initiate vampires became Novitiates. I was technically a Rogue, a vampire unaffiliated with any particular House. (Neil 138)

            There’s some drama between Elisa and Connor that appears to be part residual childhood teasing and part adult chemistry. I’m happy with the way it was portrayed seeing as how this is urban fantasy, not paranormal romance. I could have done without the thousand times the word “brat” is used, though, but that’s just me.

I have small gripes that otherwise don’t affect the final score. I didn’t like that “Auto” wasn’t explained until ¾ of the way through the book. I disliked that Elisa and Connor were constantly having sidebars in between moments instead of having full conversations to say what they needed to say.

            I would have liked to see more of Lulu. Not only is she the daughter of the sorceress who sort of willed Elisa into existence, she’s Elisa’s best friend, an avant-garde who lives with a mannequin named Steve and a cat (“It’s Eleanor of Aquitaine or nothing”) that just showed up one day, and a staunch non-magic user. I hope as the series progresses that we’ll see more of the handful of interesting characters that were introduced.