Under a Blood Moon

LOVED it! I'll be seeking out more from this author !! My customers will love it too!

My interest in this book was due to the main character holding the intriguing role of a death witch. In truth, the book involves a variety of types of witches who can wield all types of elements, but the death witch was unlike one I had come across before. I enjoy vampire novels, so the addition of the vampire boyfriend was a bit of a bonus for me. The pace was good. The struggle with the werewolves added a nice bit of action to keep the story moving. It's a nice summer read type book. I just wanted a little more, especially with respect to the death witch origins and her powers. Being the sucker for vampires that I am, I wanted more backstory about those characters.

I loved this book. It was one of the best books I have read in a long time. If these were turned into a series of books I would definitely buy more.

Seeing this copy available to read on NetGalley was exciting as it seemed like something I would really like to read. I'm happy to report it was a really great book! Mallory is a death witch with two amazing men in her life: Danny her partner in the Supernatural Investigative Unit and her vampire boyfriend Jakob. One of the things that struck me in this book was it was more of a mystery with supernatural beings more than anything else which was a nice change of pace. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy other types of books, but it was nice there weren't people and beings after the three main protagonists. The mystery was interesting, the characters were great (even though Jakob can't really eat, he cooks gourmet meals for Mallory!), and the book was very well-written. The interaction between the characters are real, and I really felt the affection between them. And the book was so descriptive, I felt like I was there. I, for one, can't wait to see what the future holds for these characters. Sink your teeth into this book because you can't go wrong if you enjoy paranormal mysteries! Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley and The Wild Rose Press for the e-copy which I reviewed voluntarily. This same review is on both Amazon and Goodreads.

So you take a sexy, dark haired member of law enforcement who can raise the dead. She is dating the most powerful or master vampire in the city. Mix in a sexy shape shifter. Throw in another vampire, an old friend of the master who happens to be horribly scarred. Now put it into a blender, add some kind of message regarding tolerance and bigotry (hard to tell as there are SO many stereotypes running around in the book) and what do you get? No, not a new Laura K. Hamilton/Anita Blake book, but a poor imitation that mixes everything that has taken LKH a whole series to building, including way too much sex (and repetitive sex at that). That's what this book is.

Perhaps, if I weren't already seriously introduced into Urban Fantasy and its sister Genre, Paranormal Romance, maybe I could have hopped over the incredibly stereotypical characters – from a Voodoo Priestess (or maybe not because it is never really established whether she practices the American version or a mixed form of Santeria and its Brazilian counterpart Candomblé) who is “blue-black” and claims to have ties to Marie Laveau to the Indian (from India) characters who own a convenience store – and the annoyingly common and ridiculously unoriginaly sex scenes (you have a 600 hundred year old vampire and he has 2 tricks in his hat?). Maybe I could have ignored the Louisiana folklore, the LaLauries and Laveau and the Rougarou. If the writing were better, I could have skipped over the blatant rip off of previous, better, original writers. But I'm sorry, I can't. The assumption that one type of Witch (a Pagan or Wiccan) would necessarily everything about everything about other magical religion makes my skin crawl That's like saying a Catholic knows everything about LDS. Let's not even get into the homophobia that lies under her depiction of the WPL and its posters, mottoes and behaviors.

Gah! I'm so annoyed and creeped out at the message this was sending I don't even want to continue the review.

2 stars out of 5

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Blood-Moon-Rachel-Graves-ebook/dp/B011H48XLA

A well-written urban fantasy with fully realized characters and a great mystery storyline. Fun worldbuilding. I enjoyed everything about this book, and I'm looking forward to more by this author.

Mallory was a detective and her partner;s name was Danny. Then Mallory and Danny got a car about a zombie attack with a officer down. Danny said he didn’t know anything could really make zombie. Then Mallory was stunned to drr two real zombies. Mallory was a dead witch and the zombies should have been hers. Mallory had raised a zombie once her husband Greg but she didn’t know she was a death witch. She didn’t know what she had done and Greg had to be put down by the local police. In general nobody liked zombies. Mallory was a detective with Supernatural Investigative Unit. When they got back to the station Danny and Mallory went right to the Lieutenant’s office and he informed although they weren’t s due for another large case yet they were getting the zombie case. He also told Mallory she would be getting a shadow team which was a pair of detectives working the same case on the opposite side of the clock and that just proved the zombie case was a serious case. The lieutenant thought there was more going on and Mallory agreed. There were two type of people that could raise zombies: death witches and Bokors or Voodoo priests. Mallory was the only death witch in the city. Mallory wanted to get out and start asking questions but there was paperwork to file but there was paperwork to file and that kept Mallory busy until the end ofthe day. Mallory didn’t like the summer always meant heat and boredom to Mallory and she was in love with a vampire- Jakob. Jakob was almost six hundred years old and spoke with a German accent.Mallory felt she and Jakob were closer in the half of year they had been together then Mallory and her husband Greg had been after four years of marriage. Phoebe was Mallory’s best friend and closest witch. Phoebe was a spirit witch and the first to recognize Mallory for she was. Then Mallory heard a raspy voice on her old fashioned answering machine and he said “ You took my my zombies I can forgive that. But you stay out of things that aren’t your business or maybe next time I take you. Mallory was still learning about all things supernatural. It seemed the zombies visited a store that had refused to pay protection money. Rakish the shop owner gave her names names and called other people to talk to her that had been approached for protection money. But nobody seemed to remember much about the two men who had approached them for protection money. The information Mallory and Danny got ‘was two white men with medium height and then were given a cellphone number the business owner had been given. Then the last shop they stopped at was a chocolate candy store and the owner was a jaguar . The owner -Indigo said he would email them a video he had from the time the two werewolves had stepped in and asked his shop and asked about what protection he had in the shop. Then Danny and Mallory went to the phonebook to look up Madame Marie’s the name the zombies had mentioned. The first one they visited didn’t sense the push Mallory but it was different with the spiritual guide.
I really enjoyed this story. I loved the plot and the pace and I felt this was well written. I also love the mystery in the story. I liked the Mallory wasn’t conceited or cocky with what she was. I also loved that we were given some of Jakob’s back story. I really loved how Jakob was concerned that he couldn’t get Mallory pregnant and his protectiveness although he went a little far on that . I would have liked more of Mallory and Jakob meeting and starting out together. I did feel that there didn’t need to be so many sex scenes in this book. I did chuckle while reading this book. I loved the characters and the ins and outs of this story and I recommend.

Action packed with a down-to-Earth strong female lead. I enjoyed the tone, it made this a fun book even with the sometimes graphic gore. There's a strong romance element, but it's not the main focus of the story.
This is the first in a series, but it has a solidly established feel to the story. You don't get lost, but you find there was a lot of story that happened before we get to this point. It works. You get to know the lead-up without being drowned in backstory. This means the series starts off with a set of fully developed characters and has momentum from the start.
If you like authors such as Charlaine Harris, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, or MaryJanice Davidson, you will enjoy this book.