Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-506-1
Fantasy Romance, 2009

In Tooth and Claw, we meet Seth Gramble who is, uh, “half-vampire, half-jaguar”. Don’t ask me which half is which. When the story opens, I’m told that he has our heroine Paxton Tenor on his radar as his mate. She’s not willing to put out that easily, since her boyfriend was killed by his kind two years ago. Seth however is not a man without compassion, so he leaves her be for six months so that she can get over herself by climbing onto Seth’s amazing sturdy ladder or something like that. Meanwhile, there are a bunch of panty-stealers on the loose and… oh god, I can’t do this. What am I doing with my life?

Anyway, this is a quick and painless read, especially if you don’t think too hard while reading this baby. I mean, come on, will it kill Toothy the Vampire Player here to, I don’t know, flash on the charm, whip out the diamonds, and bring on some shopping trips to Paris and Venice to woo the girl? All this stalking and “You’re mine, mine, mine!” emo crock gets so tedious after so many stories of this sort.

At the end of the day, this one is exactly what it seems to be. There is nothing particularly wrong with this one, but I wish the author has done a little bit more with it and added a little more substance. As a byte-sized appetizer of a read, this one is more like cotton candy than a rich slice of tiramisu cake. It’s sweet, tasty, but ultimately isn’t as filling as I’d like it to be.