🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Bound yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
An art historian who can spot a forgery from across the room gets recruited to authenticate pieces, then pulled deeper into something she didn’t sign up for, then kidnapped and offered a million dollars to create a forgery for a mysterious man named Viktor. I was completely hooked. And then the vampires showed up.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Setup
Our main character has a gift for spotting fakes. A friend’s suitor convinces her to come work for him authenticating pieces, which is interesting enough on its own. After a while he tells her the store is hemorrhaging money and they need to turn it around or shut down. So they authenticate one forgery. Just one… And then that money disappears fast and he needs more, and more, and they keep doing it until one day at an auction a man approaches her and she is immediately uncomfortable.
She tries to leave. His men follow her out and she has no choice but to go with them.
The man who had her brought to him is Viktor. He needs her to create a forgery of a specific book. He’s tried making his own and hasn’t been able to pull it off, but with her eye for detail it would be convincing. He asks her to name her price. She aims high. He negotiates her down to a million dollars and transfers half immediately.
While she’s working on the forgery she notices things that don’t add up. A girl named Sam who is always wistful about going outside. People who seem oddly restricted. She starts to wonder if she’s stumbled into some kind of cult.
She gives Sam her key card. Sam goes outside. Everyone panics about where Sam is. And that’s when it becomes clear something is very different about this place and the people in it.
They are called Revenants. They are not vampires, they insist. They bite people on the neck and drink their blood and are immortal, but they ARE NOT vampires. Sure, okay…
The Forgery Plot
The reason Viktor needs this particular book forged is that the original was written by him, centuries ago, and a dangerous Revenant named Cylas has been killing people trying to find it. Viktor’s hand was damaged at some point, making it impossible for him to recreate it himself. The plan is to use the forgery to draw Cylas out. But Cylas cannot get the original one — world ending, too much knowledge, something…
Viktor is not what she expected. He got hurt protecting her from someone Cylas sent after them and nearly dies from poison blades. She ends up staying in his room while he recovers, which is a little odd given that they are only sort of friends at this point, but here we are. Once he starts to improve he stops her before anything can happen and tells her something he has to confess first.
He drank her blood before he ever approached her. He needed to read her intentions and her thoughts, and doing so gave him the ability to keep reading her mind. He has known what she’s been thinking this entire time. Which basically, is that she wants to sleep with him.
She gets past this surprisingly quickly. They have sex. He drinks her blood while they do. He grew up in a monastery, got sick, was dying, was turned. This is apparently his first time with a human. Every time they have sex he drinks her blood.
Boston and Cylas
The forgery gets approved and they travel to Boston to bid on it. The plan is to catch Cylas there. Cylas changes the appointment at the last minute and they have to adapt. While she’s waiting she calls her friend and finds out her friend is also in Boston, in the same building. She tries to reach the Revenants there, gets through to one, and hears him get killed while she’s still on the phone.
She rushes down and catches Cylas leaving with the book. She thinks Viktor is dead. She distracts Cylas long enough for her friend to shoot him in the head with a musket. And then someone else attacks her and kills her.
She wakes up six weeks later. She’s no longer human — she is now Not A Vampire. Viktor is fine. He found her dead and turned her rather than let her go.
She can now read thoughts too.
Best Part of This Book
The art forgery premise. An art historian with a gift for spotting fakes getting pulled into increasingly dangerous authentications and then kidnapped to create the forgery of a specific book for a mysterious man who won’t explain why he needs it? Completely hooked from the start.
Worst Part of This Book
The vampire reveal. I started this book expecting an art crime thriller and got Revenants sucking blood, blood sex, and living forever. They can call themselves whatever they want but if you bite necks and drink blood and live for centuries, I know what you are. And I would never have picked this up if the description had given any indication whatsoever that this was a paranormal vampire-adjacent book. That’s on the marketing, not entirely on the book itself, but it still cost it significantly in my enjoyment.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥🔥 — There’s explicit heat here and the dynamic between Viktor and our main character is intense.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Mixed. The Boston sequence is genuinely tense and the ending twist of her being turned rather than dying is interesting. But I spent the second half of the book frustrated enough that it was hard to fully enjoy where it went.
Would I Reread It?
No.
Who Is This For
If you like paranormal romance with a dark atmospheric setting, an art crime premise, and don’t mind the vampire-adjacent element, you’ll probably enjoy this more than I did. Ali Hazelwood fans who are open to her trying something completely outside her usual contemporary STEM lane should go in knowing this is a significant departure. Just read the description more carefully than I did.
Where to Get
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
📱 Ebook
Amazon
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More from the Bound Series
- Book 1 — Bound | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 3/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 — Read the Review
- Book 2 — Unbound | Coming Soon
Ready for more from LD? Find them here