Review: When Blood Calls by J.K. Beck

Reviewer: Heidi Cheramie
Review: When Blood Calls
Author: J.K. Beck



When Blood Calls Review

Sara Constantine is a prosecutor in the D.A.‘s office and after winning a big case she meets a sexy man in a bar. They have a passionate one night stand. The next day, Sara is promoted to work in a hush-hush division called Division 6 and assumes it is homeland security. Her life is turned upside down after finding out the division is the governing agency for Paranormals. A strong element is this book was the very complex, governing body called Division 6.

Sara doesn’t have time to get over the shock of a world full of vampires, werewolves and all types of supernatural creatures before she is told she will be prosecuting Lucius Dragos. He is a vampire and the sexy man she had a one night stand with. Except for his cheesy name Lucius was an interesting, compelling hero. However, his brooding and obsessiveness over his ward, Tasha was irritating. I never felt comfortable with his relationship and deep feelings for his mentally unstable ward.

Sara is presented as a strong, competent woman who sees the world in black and white. Her career is all important to her so it seems strange that she jeopardizes her career over lust. My biggest complaint with this book was the romance. I never felt the deep emotional connection between Sara and Lucius. Lust- but nothing deeper. Because I didn’t feel the main characters emotional journey it made the love scenes boring for me.

J.K. Beck’s world building was fantastic and that is what kept me reading this book. Several of the secondary characters were extremely interesting and their relationship with Lucius more compelling than his connection with Sara. Ryan Doyle was cool and we never found out why he hates Lucius and what destroyed their friendship. I also wanted to know more about Serge and his tortured journey dealing with his inner Daemon. I liked vampire, Nick Montegue a lot. The alliance between the werewolves and vampires also was intriguing with lots of mistrust and politics.

I felt the world building took a little too long in this book and it was complicated. There were lots of secondary characters. Maybe too many and too many points of view. Because the author had to take a lot of this first book to build the complex world I think the relationship between Sara and Lucius suffered. So I will read the second book in this series called The Shadow Walkers. I am hoping one of the books is about Doyle and that the emotional, romantic aspects of the story will improve because the world J.K. Beck has created is quite exciting. I give this book 3 STARS with high hopes for Book Two.


Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages

Publisher: Bantam; Original edition (August 31, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 044024577X
ISBN-13: 978-0440245773