Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 1-60504-223-4
Fantasy Romance, 2008
Obey Me is an urban fantasy romance with vampires. We have some villain of a vampire killing people. Our heroine, Sophie Marlo, is a reporter who feels that this case could be her “big break”. She has the ability to make people bend to her will using her mind so she gets to convince a cop to let her see the body of the latest victim and to snap some photos. She then decides to do some snooping on her own, finding her way into yet another club run by vampires where kinky acts are performed openly and flagrantly. I think we need an outright ban on spook clubs in this kind of stories and force these authors to think of something new for a change. At any rate, she soon finds herself entranced by Alex, the vampire who is convinced that his enemy Octavius is trying to frame him for the murders.
This one has plenty of tried and true clichés of urban fantasy romances but I have to say, Ms Cuccaro manages to get me hooked on the story. She has an engaging writing style that has a nice balance of humor and grit. Sophie is not going to be to everyone’s liking, I suspect, but I like her. She’s a reporter, after all, so it makes sense that she’s going to be as thin-skinned as one can be, poking her nose where it doesn’t belong. She can’t be a good reporter if she isn’t like this, I feel. The cartoon villains are pretty disappointing, but the rest of the story is an unexpectedly good read, considering how the author has loaded her story with tired clichés.
All in all, this is a pretty good read. It would be really scary to imagine what the author can do when she stops trying so hard to write a story that is similar in too many ways to so many stories out there.
| 
