Total-E-Bound, £1.49, ISBN 978-1-906328-27-6
Paranormal Romance, 2007

In Elisa Adams’s Illusions, our heroine Alexis Moran finds herself standing in front of the door of the “haunted mansion of Belville” to deliver some contracts to the owner of the place. Then again, despite the rumors of ghosts and other creepy-crawlies hanging around the place, it can’t be that bad if the owner of the place, Jeremy Talbot, is Alexis’s childhood friend, right?

When Alexis accepts Jeremy’s offer to look around the place, little does she know that Jeremy is actually a kind of vampire who feeds on emotions rather than blood.

This is a very short story, which you can probably tell from the cover price of this book, and therefore there is nothing much that I can say about depths, plot, and characterization because there is hardly any. The atmosphere is very appropriately creepy yet romantic in a Goth-is-pretty way though, which is nice. Jeremy is a stereotypical emo fellow (dude here is even an artist) full of mournful “Yes, I wanna shag you, but oh, the pain it will cause me to see the look on your face when you know what I am!” looks and angst. These two characters zip through the whole sex thing in breakneck speed because they have to say goodbye to me soon, so there isn’t much of a relationship here apart from how these two are supposedly infatuated with each other when they were kids.

If you know what to expect, you probably won’t be disappointed with Illusions. It’s readable enough for what it is.