Dark Child: The Awakening by Adina West

Dark Child #1

Lately things have been getting weird for pathology technician Kat Chanter. She's been craving raw meat, and having dreams so realistic they're scary. When she accepts a job offer from the prestigious Hema Castus Research Institute, she hopes she'll have the chance to discover what's wrong with her, but instead, her move to New York thrusts her headlong into a treacherous hidden world, where the wrong move could be fatal .

Tarot, witchcraft and astrology all take on a frightening resonance in Dark Child's richly imagined alternative reality where vampiric beings live among us, hidden by magic. Dark romance tangles with paranormal fantasy and page-turning suspense in this enthralling tale of 'dark child' Kat Chanter, half-human and half-vampire, who has woken an ancient prophecy and must face a formidable destiny.

This was an odd one for me, I did quite enjoy most of this book. The slow build up to the reveal of what is going on with her, and why she's so important was a nice change from how things normally are in these kinds of books. (Vampire books)

I loved all the characters, and the protagonist was very well done. Questions were answered in a way that didn't feel like just random information dumps, and there is still enough mystery lingering with the story and characters that a second book won't seem like the author is trying to drag things out just to write more books.

The thing that I did have issue with, was the romance. I expected it to be between Kat and Amarock. But no, it was between Alek. And that didn't make one bit of sense. Sure he flirted heavily with her for most of the time, but that's all I got from it. Him making sexual innuendo at her to make her feel a little uncomfortable because she made him feel uncomfortable for wanting to taste her blood. She seems to barely even like him as a person, let alone love him. Yet after one kiss she's all salty when she learns that he's a womanizer. And there he was trying to say he wanted to marry her, or become a one woman man for her. That was the only thing that bothered me, the unnecessary love triangle, or just even the very forced romance between the "pure" girl and the womanizer/man-whore guy.