ARC Review: Immortal Ever After (An Argeneau Novel) By Lynsay Sands (PNR)

Blurb from avonromance.com

New York Times bestselling author Lynsay Sands delivers a wickedly fun Argeneau novel featuring a vampire ready to claim his mate and the beauty who resists her fate! A kiss doesn’t mean eternity . . . Valerie Moyer doesn’t believe in vampires—until she is kidnapped by a fanged psychopath! After escaping her bloodthirsty captor, she’s through with creatures of the night. Until she finds herself under the protection of the darkly handsome Anders. Not only is she expected to accept that Anders is immortal, but also that she is the woman destined to be his life mate! . . . Or does it? Anders felt a connection to Valerie from the moment he cradled her bruised body in his arms. But before he claims her, he must destroy the vampire who almost stole her from him forever. His job would be easier if Valerie didn’t fight him every step of the way. Still, Anders loves a challenge, and the green-eyed beauty is worth fighting for!

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Immortal Ever After: An Argeneau Novel

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The book features our hero Anders and our heroine Valerie. It starts off with Valerie being kidnapped and held hostage with 6 other young women. Each are kept drugged and in cages and are brought out for dinner one night a week. The women can't see each other due to being kept in a dark basement but find talking to each other helps sooth some of the horror. All the women believe that the guy and his helper (dubbed Igor) are crazy, that he's living some weird Vampire fantasy. Eventually Valerie realizes that their food is being drugged and decides that she will forego her daily meal of oatmeal and water to keep her wits about her when it's time for her night out. When her night arrives, she is lucid enough to concoct an escape plan. She pretends at first to be drugged, all the while looking for anything that can be used as a weapon. When she is dragged into an upstairs bathroom, she jumps her assailant and stakes him. She, of course, finds a phone to call 911 but then hears the garage door opening and realizes that who she assaulted was only Igor and the bigger threat is on his way to her. After she calls 911, she makes her escape through a window, knowing the police won't make it in time to help her.
Enter our hero, Anders. His group of Vampire/Immortal enforcers have waylaid the 911 call and have arrived at the house in question to clean up the rouge immortals' mess and bring him to justice without letting the mortals know their kind exist. After a thorough investigation and look around the property, Anders ends up finding Valerie passed out in the bushes due to her injuries, starvation and a jump from a two-story house. When Anders decides to try to give her some medical attention, she ends up waking up in the process and it's at that moment, when Anders tries to enter her mind to soothe her, that he realizes he can't read her......(queue the "dun, dun, dun" music).
OK enough spoilers! If you aren't familiar with Lynsay Sands Argeneau Series, It's about a family of Immortal Atlantians who were subject to an Atlantian medical experiment gone array. They were injected with Nanos but when Atlantis fell, no one was there to help take them out. The Nanos have evolved to give the descendants the classic "Vampire" attributes but they claim they are not vampires. Anywho, one of the attributes is a selection process by the Nanos for their host in which they choose the perfect "life mate" and one of the tale tell signs is not being able to mind read that person.
All the false Vampire/Atlantian stuff aside, Lynsay Sands has brought to the PNR world a wonderful series with the Argeneau's. It's definitely a classic HEA based in the PNR world. Each book features some descendant from the original Argeneau family or central character to the books. They are definitely fun reads with very strong characters. What I loved most about this book is that the heroine, Valerie, is definitely not the typical female PNR mortal character waiting for rescue from the big sexy Vampire man. All through the book, she is rescuing herself and/or others. Anders very rarely is on the scene when rescuing is needed, which is actually kind of funny.
As a fan of the series, I definitely thought this was a great addition to the ongoing series and would highly recommend it for a PNR read.

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4 out of 5 books