Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60928-385-8
Fantasy Erotica, 2011
One, two, three, four, five… oh my, Bella Swan have mercy, I just realize that there are five people on the cover. Isn’t this Siren Publishing territory? Still, despite the overload of male dongs in this story, the romance is actually between two people.
We are back to Midnight Playground, the vampire BDSM club in London on the year 2069. Ilana and Calam are two humans who frequent the club, hoping to attract a vampire patron that will offer them the Turning Kiss and let them become immortals forever. For Ilana, she wishes to escape a lifetime of being bought and used by becoming a fang face, and the clock is ticking. She is 28. The vampires will kick out any humans that are over 30, so Ilana is determined to become all sparkly before she is considered a hag by the fang faces. Calam is an employee of the club since he was 19, and he too wants the Turning Kiss. When the story opens, three raunchy male vampires get these two to join them in a party for five where no orifices is left empty. Amidst the tangle of bodies, Ilana and Calam realize that, perhaps, their feelings for each other are more than mere lust.
This one has both male-on-male and male-on-female action, and I’m actually disappointed that there is no hot female-on-female action here. Vampires here are supposed to be a free-for-all where sexual preference is concerned, so the glaring omission of hot girl-on-girl is most noticeable here if only because I find it an unlikely one. Still, what is present is really hot, even if a part of me thinks that there are way too many penises in the scene. They are not that important, we could have easily sent a few packing out of the room and I won’t miss them.
I find this love between Calam and Ilana rather hard to believe, given how little room there is in this story for character development, but I do like how the author manages to slip in some quiet time for these two to actually talk. Eventually, though, all that “love” thing becomes tad overwhelming and even corny as both Calam and Ilana as well as the vampires keep saying that they love everyone and anyone. They start to remind me of Carebears and I really don’t like the idea of Carebears doing the naughty things these people do in this story.
All things considered, The Turning Kiss is a hot read, although as a love story, it gets a bit too corny and saccharine for my liking, especially towards the end.
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