Review - Twice Tempted (Night Prince # 2) by Jeaniene Frost

Twice Tempted, the middle book in the Night Prince trilogy, has left me with a flutter of different emotions and I’m hoping that this review doesn’t come across as too snarky or angry. Let's start by discussing the fact that Leila is a different character from Once Burned. I’m not saying that’s she’s a Mary Sue who whines, and dances to a different beat that only she can hear (although she does have an inner voice), while everyone around her thinks she’s out of her damn mind for being with Vlad. She still has a tremendous gift and her ability to use electricity against an opponent hasn’t been fully diminished. But, a lot of her actions were absolutely mind blowing and had me in a tither.

One of the major eye rolls moments I had with Twice Tempted was Leila's disgust with Vlad after he gives her something in front of HIS horde, which also included her sister Gretchen after a few months of Leila whining and bitching about Vlad’s inability to say the magic I LOVE YOU to her. Does Leila show her appreciation by thanking him? Nope. She chooses to LEAVE instead and return to Florida to be with Marty. ::head desk:: For someone who hung around with Marty, a vampire, for years, she was absolutely stupefied that Vlad would show his feelings for Leila in such an honorable manner. Seriously, what is your major damage Leila?

Leila knew going into her relationship with Vlad that he would NEVER commit to saying I LOVE YOU to her and that she would just have to deal with it or leave. And yet, SHE choose to be in the relationship with Vlad even though Marty and Maximus kept telling her to run, not walk away from him as fast as her little feet could take her. She knew that Vlad was an extremely dangerous vampire and that he would do anything to keep her and his people safe from those who want to destroy him at ANY cost.

But, it's ALL Vlad's fault when things go wrong. It's ALL Vlad's fault when she stubbornly continues on her misguided ways of trying to find Vlad's traitor and ends up, SHOCKED, I KNOW, nearly dying 3 times, and ending up losing her humanity after the fourth attempt on her life! I was actually hoping that she would die and come back as a ghoul, which would have been totally something new and absolutely cool! We need more zombies in our diets! We also need more from VLAD’s perspective!

As I was saying in my previous review of Once Burned, not a single human character has survived Frost's world without being changed into either a demon (Denise), or a vampire (Kira). OH please, like I'm really spoiling what happens in this book or in her previous installments by saying this? And, yes, I do realize that this is a PARANORMAL book which centers on vampires, ghouls, demons, etc. So, why can’t we have (1) human character that somehow manages to live a long time by drinking vampire blood? After-all, wasn’t Leila drinking blood in order to keep her alive because her abilities were slowly killing her?

The next thing that annoyed me the most to the point where I threw this book across the room and accidently hit my cat who was sleeping at the time, was the whole wedding shenanigans. How long were Bones and Cat together before they actually got married in both the human and vampire worlds? Just saying! I may have to re-read Menecheres and Kira’s book again just to refresh my memories on how they ended up married. If the wedding had occurred at the end of this trilogy, it would have made more sense. Yes, I’m once again most likely in the minority with my thoughts on this as well. I did, however, appreciate Vlad’s confrontation with Leila’s father:

“I dare because I want no misunderstand between us. I am everything you think I am, but I love your daughter, and what I love, I protect with all of the violence in me, which, as you’ve guessed, is considerable.”

Leila's abilities, as I said above, are still awesome and I loved the fact that she toasted more than a handful of vampires who not only kidnapped her, but one of Vlad’s suspected traitors as well. But, I also wanted Vlad to put Leila in a cage for a while after one of her many goofs that caused her to nearly die permanently and let her sit there for a few days while cooling her jets.

One of the things that Frost does very well is write sexy scenes. It’s a given at this point that she’s trying to outmatch the legendary chapter 32 between Cat and Bones before that series sails into the sunset. Does she match that with Twice Tempted? Oh, hells yes! There’s nothing like angry sex between two people to get your motor running.

The bottom line is that both Vlad and Leila are as stubborn as they come and definitely deserve each other even with all their faults and bad habits. They deserve years of arguing, and angry make-up sex as well.

Yes, I will be reading the final book in this series hoping that Vlad at least gets to have his point of view instead of it being all about Leila.

Title - Twice Tempted (Night Prince # 2)
Author - Jeanine Frost
Publisher - Avon Books
Released - March 26, 2013
Purchased via Book Depository
Genre - Paranormal Romance