Sex and the Single Vampire

Author: Katie MacAlister
Published: March 2004 (Love Spell)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Quote of Choice: "I shall bring my rapier. I am most dashing with my rapier," Antonio told Noelle. He demonstrated with a few moves that would have left her without the ability to bear children had the rapier been made up of anything other than air and psychic energy.

When I started reading Sex and the Single Vampire, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was an honest-to-goodness sequel to A Girl's Guide to Vampires. I love seeing familiar characters again, and finding out how they're doing with their happily-ever-after endings. Think of it as an extended epilogue.

Allegra Telford is an American Summoner (can raise ghosts haunting a building, demons, etc.) in London, gathering proof of ghosts for her employer, the United Psychical Research Association (UPRA). She visits reportedly haunted sites in London tries to raise the spirits stuck there. Unfortunately, she hasn't had much success with that. Finally, she sneezes during a Summoning in her hotel room, raising the ghost of a cat, Mr. Woogums. At the next summoning, she sneezes and brings up Mr. Woogums' owner, Esme. Strangely, sneezing seems to be the key to Allegra's Summoning powers.

While in London, she promised her cousin that she'd attend a C.J. Dante book signing. C.J. Dante is known for his books featuring Moravians (a.k.a. Dark Ones). Basically, male Moravians are like vampires, doomed to be soulless (unless his parents were Joined) until he finds his Beloved, who redeems his soul after they have completed the seven steps of Joining. Christian (That's what the C stands for) was in A Girl's Guide to Vampires, where he thought Joy Randall was his Beloved, but she was already in love with Raphael St. John. At the end of that book, Joy promised Christian that she'd help him find his real Beloved.

So Allegra and Christian meet at the book signing and Joy (now pregnant), realizes that Allegra is Christian's Beloved even though the parties in question disagree with that. Christian is MacAlister's typical alpha male character. Allegra is a woman who suffered an abusive marriage and promised herself that she'd never allow a man to control her again. However, the two have to spend a lot of time together while trying to help Christian locate his Moravian friend, Sebastian, who's gone missing. They believe the Association of Research Mediums and Psychics Investigation Trust (also goes by the unfortunate acronym ARMPIT) is holding Sebastian captive.

This is my favorite of MacAlister's vampire paranormal romances. There's some real character development and I like the way Allegra and Christian made compromises between Christian's alpha male-dominating nature and Allegra's refusal to be controlled by a man again. Plus, Allegra's inability to Release (send ghosts on to Heaven or whatnot) means that she collected several ghosts that refused to be Released (a Summoner can't Release a ghost that doesn't want to move on). She even found a ghost of a Spanish courtier named Antonio who kept challenging Christian for Allegra's hand. Of course, the flesh and blood Christian won out.

It was great, and apparently, Sebastian's story will be featured in Just One Sip, a collection of vampire romances coming out in September 2006.