"Moonlight" by Katie Salidas

Moonlight (Immortalis Vampire Series — Book 5)
by Katie Salidas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I’ve enjoyed all of Katie Salidas’ books in the Immortalis series, so I looked forward to reading this one. "Moonlight (Immortalis Vampire Series Book 5)" carries on the series and shows us Fallon, Alyssa’s best friend, and Aiden, werewolf Alpha of the Olde Towne wolf pack. As in the previous three books prior to this one, Fallon is human and deeply in love with Aiden. When Aiden’s father died, Aiden became Alpha by blood, not by trial. Part of the ritual in becoming the true Alpha, means he must have a wolf mate. The pack has trouble-accepting Fallon as the Alpha female because she is not a wolf. So now, Fallon must face the decision of either turning away from Aiden & the pack, leaving them all behind, or accept her destiny & become a werewolf herself. However, there is dissension in the ranks of the Olde Towne wolf pack. Two other werewolves want the role of Alpha and will do anything to get what they want.

I have enjoyed how author, Katie Salidas, builds her characters & their world, & fits together each facet of her story. As I said, I looked forward to reading this story. I hoped that she would put as much creativity into her description of turning werewolves as she did turning vampires. It was not as I had hoped, but she did not disappoint. There were points in the story that I felt needed a little more punch. For instance, though Fallon fought her final fight with due diligence, I would have liked to have read that Fallon took the final blow to her nemesis instead of the pack becoming involved. With Fallon going through all that pain and agony & nearly being killed, it felt somewhat anti-climactic to have the pack finish the fight. Showing the pack as supportive here worked for the story, but I felt that Fallon was gypped.

Though I have my opinions on minor details that I feel would better if written differently, it doesn't steal from the fact that Salidas did an awesome job with this story! I must say, these books get better with each one.

Grab your copy now!

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“Immortalis Carpe Noctem,” by Katie Salidas

Katie Salidas is, or I should say was, an unknown author to me. I have begun to follow numerous authors on twitter in the past months, but Ms. Salidas began to follow me first. I found her to be an excellent conversationalist, willing to chat at the drop of a, eh… tweet. She’s known on twitter as @QuixoticKatie… the name alone intrigued and caused me to watch her stream and what she posts.

Generally, new authors email me or tweet me to request that I read and review their books. Ms. Salidas never did this. She has promoted her books herself and with the affection that she whips up in her following. One day, I caught a random tweet where she was promoting, “Immortalis Carpe Noctem.” I browsed the link a couple of times, but honestly, I didn’t care for the cover. This is the truth. I did it… I judged a book by it’s cover!

I’m not sure exactly how the conversation came up but Ms. Salidas offered me a one time opportunity to download one of her books to read and review. I chose “Immortalis Carpe Noctem” because I really wanted to start the series at the beginning. Go figure.

I’m really hard on storylines. I have to tell myself that I have to read past the first couple of chapters, because quite honestly what I do is read the first chapter and if I’m not gripped in the storyline right there, I lay the book down and don’t pick it up again.

“Immortalis Carpe Noctem,” is written in first person and it is all the experiences of a young college aged woman who decides to walk home by herself in one of the roughest cities in America, Las Vegas. Of course, reading Alyssa’s point of view, she took us through her walk in the dark and introduced us first to her attackers who intended on raping, mugging, and killing her. They succeed at nearly killing her by stabbing her as she attempted to free herself. However, during her scuffle with her would be attackers, an ancient vampire named, Lysander, arrives just a little late to her rescue. Instead of taking her to a hospital to receive life saving skills from a doctor, he chooses instead to drain her further and then give her his blood thus turning her into a vampire.

At first, my thought was that this was just going to be another vampire love story. It wasn’t really. Actually, this author went one-step further. This whole story is Alyssa’s first hand experience of becoming a vampire and learning how to live as one in the twenty-first century. She has rules she must abide by, new senses to discover.

Ms Salidas kept with many, if not all, of vampire folklore. Her vampires can’t take sunlight, they live off of human blood, and of course they all have fangs.

So, what is my opinion of this story? I usually love any story that involves vampires. However, this story really didn’t have anything that different to it that would make me Oooh and Aah about it. There was no love triangle or for that matter a love affair. We do see Alyssa begin to fall for her maker, Lysander. They do have sex together… but aside from learning, what it would be like to experience vampirism first hand it was an okay start to a series. I am interested in reading the rest of the series. I feel there is great potential for Alyssa and this first book has laid a good foundation to springboard into the next book of a series. I would love to see what kind of a person Alyssa turns out to be.

This book was an awesome start to what I hope to be an excellent series. It definitely is worth the read. Let’s hit me with your next book, Ms Salidas.

You can find the link to Katie Salidas' web site in the left sidebar.