Blood Memories by Barb Hendee

In the world of Vampire novels, this is an older one. Written in the nineties I saw a lot of similarities to recent vampire novels in this book. It was an ok book, not the best in its genre, but it wasn't bad either.

Eleisha is a vampire and her task is to take care of William, a vampire who was turned while having Alzheimer's and now has lived undead with the disease for many years. Taking care of William is about to get harder though. Normally solitary beings, they had made the friendship of Edward and he has just gone mad and killed himself in front of witnesses. Since Eleisha is connected to him, she has to hide. But these are no ordinary police witnesses, they have psychic powers and between them and William's son Julian who is also a vampire, she has to be careful or fall prey to all their schemes.

Eleisha has a few defenses though. When a vampire is made, the attribute that was most profound becomes ten times as powerful. In Eleisha's case that is vulnerability, she can literally make people want to take care of her. She also discovers that most vampires have psychic powers as well and she can learn to use that to her advantage. Despite this though, she is playing with dangerous players and must keep herself and William safe.

The characters were ok. Eleisha of course was the most developed but they gave plenty of background on all of the characters so at least you knew their history. She takes pretty good care of herself despite being called weak and not so wise with the world.

Hendee's writing is pretty clear. She doesn't use a lot of offensive language but there are some violent scenes and descriptions in this book. Her style in this book was a bit distracting. With the vampires psychic abilities there were a lot of flashbacks as they showed each other things. This took away from the main story with a lot of huge gaps in the novel. Her writing isn't really engaging either and while I enjoyed the story, I wasn't drawn into it.

As far as vampire stories go, this is average. I do see a lot of inspiration for some of the ones written lately and advise people who enjoy the more recent ones to read this one. She has some other books out and it seems this could be a series so I'll definitely be checking more of her work out.

Blood Memories
Copyright 1998
243 pages