This is a very good vampire romance. If you like a lot of sex in your stories this book may not be for you. there are no explicit sex scenes in this book, you are lead to understand it is happening but it is not described. You can not help but like Drake for all he will go thru to keep Elena.
The second book in the series is Bound by Blood. ( )

Review Available Soon At www.nocturnereads.com ( )

Ok wow!!! I read this book in one day!! I have to say the story is well write and keeps you wanting more. However, yes there is a however the story gets kind of pushed towards the end. I mean you were built up to think the end would be amazing however it's not. I didn't like how everything just seemed to fall on place. I wanted more drama which, I never really got. I did like the story it wasn't full of sex and it was a good read. Lastly. The book did leave me wanting more.... ( )

Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: A light, sweet, enjoyable paranormal romance with some suspense and lots of naïve humor to keep you entertained.

Opening Sentence: His favorite liar was in the remains of a castle that had been built only a few years before he had been turned.

The Review:

Bound by Night is the first book in Amanda Ashley’s Bound Series. Drake is a 500 plus year old vampire who is weary with life and taking refugee in his favorite lair, Wolfram Castle. He discovers a human woman in the castle one night when he returns from a hunt. Elena Knightsbridge is a 19-year-old woman, who has run away from home and her cruel and perverted uncle. She had nowhere else to go, so she decided that she would stay at the old abandoned castle until she could decide what to do next. Neither would have guessed at the future that awaited them and the trials they would have to overcome to reach it.

Bound by Night confused me a little at first because it reads like a historical romance. It feels like, as an afterthought it was changed to be more modern by adding some slang and references to modern conveniences. The characters themselves suffer from this as they seem at odds with the tone of the writing and did not always live up to what I expected of them. Elena was extremely naïve and childlike, instead of how I would picture a 19-year-old woman in this day and age. Her actions and thoughts didn’t flow with the supposed time period. Drake’s character suffered as well seeming to drift between acting his age with the old world mannerisms he grew up with and then flipping and acting as if he were a teenage boy. It felt forced, like they weren’t being true to themselves as they should have been. I would have enjoyed the story more had Ashley just left it as a historical and let the characters be who they were intended to be.

Drake defies his father and refuses to take his place on the council by marrying Elena and forsaking his arranged marriage. I was actually enticed by this part of the plot, learning more about the vampires and their politics, the rules of their hidden world. The second half of the book is completely apart from the first half as more characters are introduced as Elena and Drake are forced to face the consequences of their love. Their characters grow and you can see the love between them grow as well and it all seemed believable.

Elena’s uncle was repulsive and several times throughout the book I wished he would just go away already. I understood his role in the plot as the catalyst for Elena running away. He was a serious pervert and actually molested and raped his own daughter. After she ran away and the plot moved forward with the vampire politics, he just kept popping back up and I was hoping that Drake would just kill him already so I wouldn’t have to think about him anymore.

Bound by Night was a classic romance and despite the conflicting time period issues and the repulsion I felt for the uncle, I truly enjoyed it. It was a light and fluffy story that I could lose myself in for a few hours. There was torment, deception and some action to keep you interested and plenty of lovey dovey, gushy romance. I am looking forward to reading the second book in this series, Bound by Blood.

Notable Scene:

Elena sat up, her gaze moving over him. He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt open at the collar, the perfect foil for his long black hair and midnight blue eyes.

“Good evening, wife.”

She swallowed hard. “Drake.”

“I trust you have made your choice?”

“Do I really have one?” she asked with some asperity.

He smiled at her, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “One always has a choice.”

“I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

“You say that like you think it will be distasteful.”

“Maybe it will, “ she replied flippantly. “I’ve never made love to a vampire.”

“Or anyone else,” he reminded her.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “How do vampires make love?”

“The same as everyone else,” he said with an amused grin. “Why not wait until the foul deed is over before you judge me? You might find it enjoyable.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I will never lay a hand on you again.”

“Why should I believe you? You promised you wouldn’t demand your husbandly rights, yet you are about to ravish me.”

He laughed again. “Fair Elena, I am demanding nothing of you. Only asking. Would you like it better if I begged?” And so saying, he dropped to one knee in front of her. “Please, my lady wife, I need you to do this for me.” …… (a while later)

“Husband?”

“Yes, wife?”

She bit down on her lower lip, then huffed a sigh. They were married. It shouldn’t be so difficult to ask for what she wanted. What if he rejected her? What if he didn’t? “Can we…I mean, would it be all right if we…?”

“Go on,” he coaxed.

She cleared her throat. “Well, you promised never to lay a hand on me again if I didn’t like it.”

He nodded.

“Well, what if I liked it?” she asked boldly. “Can we do it again? Unless you’d rather not,” she added quickly.

Drake laughed softly as he rose over her, his dark eyes alight with amusement. “My dear wife, I should be more than happy to indulge your every wish.”

The Bound Series:

1. Bound by Night

2. Bound by Blood

FTC Advisory: Kensington Books provided me with a copy of Bound by Night. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. In addition, I don’t receive affiliate fees for anything purchased via links from my site. ( )

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

BOUND BY NIGHT never met a romance cliché it didn’t like. If you can think of one, I guarantee you it’s in this book. And yet, I still enjoyed it.

The plot in BOUND BY NIGHT is jammed packed. It begins as a classic romance with a young girl fleeing her home and accepting an offer from a mysterious man. They share a Beauty and the Beast type courtship, fall in love, and the book almost could have ended there. Instead, the story shifts to focus on the repercussions of their vampire human relationship that defies vampire law. What began as basically a two character romance grows to include a huge cast of vampires, council members, drones, and human sheep (humans enslaved for feeding). The many storylines include arranged marriages, escaped prisoners, murder mysteries, political revolutions, and treason. It should have been too much, but again, I enjoyed it.

While I was won over by the romance tropes and increased scope of the story, there were some aspects of BOUND BY NIGHT that failed to charm me. The book is set in modern day, but it feels much more like it was written as a historical and then the author went back and added a few references to iPods and jeans as an after thought. The dialogue, characterizations, behaviors, and locations are all what you would expect to see in historical novel, especially Elena. She’s about as modern as blood letting.

I don’t normally talk about cover art in my reviews, but it bears mentioning that Elena in the book has black hair (something that is repeatedly mentioned) and yet is portrayed as a redhead on the cover. Potentially more problematic is the fact that the same models are used on the cover of the next book despite the fact that the story is about a different couple. It just seems to me that these are details that the publisher shouldn’t have missed.

Overall, BOUND BY BLOOD doesn’t aim to break any paranormal romance rules, instead it embraces them and, as a result, gets away with using such a familiar formula. The next book in the Bound series is called BOUND BY BLOOD and will be published on September 27, 2011 and will feature one of the characters from BOUND BY NIGHT. I won’t tell you which one so I don’t spoil anything, but I expect more romance clichés, multiple storylines, and a few fun hours spent wondering why it all works.

Sexual Content:
Several brief, non graphic sex scenes. References to rape and incest. Multiple attempted rapes. ( )