Masquerade by Rivka Spicer

Oceana is a hard-working, straight down the line indexer with an attitude.

Tristan is the millennia old executioner for the vampire council.

They meet when Tristan seeks her help on a case and she is unwillingly drawn into his twisted and violent world where nothing is as it seems on the surface. As she discovers through Tristan who and what she is, Oceana's life changes irrevocably and the only choice she believes she has left is whether or not to give her love to this charming, perplexing and dangerous man, but even that is twisted around her by the masquerade that is life amongst vampires...

It’s hard nowadays to read a vampire story that doesn’t sound like every other one out there on the market. This one, however, had a nice air of originality that made it a fun read.

What I liked the most was the heroine. Oceana has spunk. Her attitude makes her a strong character to follow and it becomes easy to keep turning the pages to see what else her life will throw at her. Tristan, the male protagonist, is great. He provides a nice foil for Oceana.

The story takes a bit to get going, but once it does, the pacing is handled well. There are very few moments when the plot line slows down, and the writer successfully avoids info-dumps which can get frustrating for the reader. I expected lots of overwhelming romantic scenes, but the book had a good balance to it, so that these scenes never got out of control or became repetitive. It was actually a rather tame book, for dealing with vampires.

Although you might be tempted to pass this one by because of the whole vampire story-line, there’s so much more in this book. I do recommend it and will look for future books by the author.