Ethan Hale is a vampire with a mission. Together with his three brothers and a few other unmated members, he fights with The Vampire Coalition to protect humans from fallen vampires. His life is fairly simple. If he has a problem…he solves it. If it’s an evil problem…he kills it. But his uncomplicated life is about to end when his mate unexpectedly calls him to her.
Brianna Cole is weak, her life force fading away. She thinks she is suffering from a rare form of leukemia. Little does she knows that her illness is much more complicated. She’s dying because she has not united with her vampire mate and given him his soul that she has been guarding since birth.
Ethan finds Brianna and knows he needs to convince her to mate or watch her die. He’s waited for her for five hundred years and he has no intention of letting her go, but she is not in any shape for the dominate, volatile mating ceremony with a vampire. He will have to win the race against time to strengthen Brianna and a battle with a stalking fallen to claim his mate. He is also at war with his mating instincts that make him burn to dominate and conquer her. But Ethan is determined, and the stubborn vampire will do whatever is necessary to possess his soul bonded mate…forever.
Sometimes books in novella form work and sometimes they don’t. I really liked the story, the characters, the mythology of J.S. Scott’s vampires and the attraction between Brianna and Ethan. I just can’t help but wondering if I would have liked it more if there would have been… well… more.
A lot happened in Ethan’s Mate in a short amount of time. Ethan had spent 5 hundred years and given up on finding a mate (so had his brothers.) Brianna faced death because of a life threatening disease. An evil force was after her and evidently threatening all potential soul guarding mates. It was all intriguing and had amazing potential. What little action there was, was intense. The romance was hot and the characters were likable. It’s just hard to accept the story as a race against time when everything is wrapped up in 57 pages. I kind of walked away from it thinking ‘well, that was easy.’
I do see a future for this series though. My curiosity was sparked enough to want to find out more about the other brothers and see where this story is going. Rory’s Mate is next and I just might have to check it out.
I received Ethan’s Mate as a free download from Amazon on April 10, 2013
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