Twilight Hunger had potential, it had interesting characters, an evolving plot a mystery and several possible romances, all but one never happened. I loved Lou and Maxine as characters. I would have liked to see more of them. One that finally (end of book) developed into "love" was not the most fulfilling of endings. It was like riding a rollar-coaster you twist, turn, climb finally getting to the top of the hill only to find that is the end of the ride. ARGUH ! ( )

Morgan is trying to deal with her parent's death, which left her broke and without a future, only her family friend, David Sumner who rescues her and finds her a home. Exploring her home she finds some diaries that intrigue her, they're about being a vampire and living in this very house, she reckons they're fantasy and uses them to inspire scripts that become very popular, and then the writer comes into her life.

I found it entertaining but occasionally I really felt like there were a lot off characters being introduced to add to the series rather than to add conflict, the fact that Morgan was dying should have been a fair chunk of the conflict right there.

Overall I liked it, but didn't love it. ( )

Two women with two separate lives brought together by one mysterious man. One woman (Morgan) raised well off but is stealing from the mysterious man that she loves (Dante). The other (Maxine), a woman with a detective mind with 2 best friends and the older man (Lou) that she loves. A guarded complex burned to the ground after which Maxine tries to discover the secrets that might lie within the ashes. Frank Stiles, the main with a hatred for Dante's kind.

Morgan was a boring woman and therefore wasted away in my memory by her despair. Dante, sexy. Lou, reminds me of a fat balding guy with no personality still trying to run around and get the bad guys. Maxine, way too curious in an uninteresting way. She reminds me of a boy and has no realistic taste for romance.

Maxine is threatened and gets into trouble after discovering secrets in the ashes. Morgan is being discovered while stealing the writing of someone else. That stolen work brings her fame. I did not like the way that the relationship between Maxine and Morgan was brought to light. Entirely toooo much drama. Of all the characters however, Dante was my favorite because of his alluring qualities regardless of the fact that held an attraction towards a wuss.

I am being nice and giving the book 3 STARS because it was too romantically unbelievable to me. To no fault of the author, I may or may not continue with this series (I'm still thinking about it). I am not a mystery romance type of person. ( )

Wow. This is one of those cases where I seriously underestimated what to expect from a book. I was expecting a typical vampire romance--an entertaining 4-star read. I got instead a fairly complex story and characters whose lives don't begin and end within the pages of the book.

There are two plot lines going on simultaneously, which could have been confusing at first, but was handled well. In one, Max is an adventurous/foolhardy young woman who finds evidence that the government has been studying vampires when their facility burns down. In the other, Morgan, a young screenwriter with writer's block and a terminal disease, discovers a vampire's diary and transforms it into a series of films.

The threads come together five years later when Morgan receives an award nomination for the vampire screenplay, attracting attention from the vampires and their hunters.

The romances: Max with the cop she's loved for years, and Morgan with the vampire she'd thought existed only in her imagination and that of the diaries' author, proceed apace with the paranormal suspense plot. Events on one level affect events on the other.

I'm not going to put any spoilers here, but there are plenty of twists and turns, and all the characters, both main and secondary, have believable emotional motivation for what they do.

*sigh* I suck at writing about books I really like. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what grabbed me, and when I try, the details don't seem proportionate to the reaction. Of late, intensity of emotion and depth of POV seem to be what I'm looking for--not in everything I read, that would make me nuts, or at least slow my reading way down--but in a 5-star read. Twilight Hunger has that.

And then I made the mistake of looking at the reviews on Amazon. An average of 3 stars?? What am I missing? Am I developing a taste for melodrama? The consensus seemed to be that it was a departure from Shayne's usual style (which disappointed me--I was looking forward to finding more of her books--I still will, and I'll hope they were wrong), and that there was too much mucking around with subplots (one of the things I liked about the book), and there wasn't enough Hot Vampire Nookie (gee, what a shame). Oh, and they didn't like vampires to have any weaknesses, which the ones in this book do (I find invincible characters pretty boring). Frighteningly, I found myself agreeing with Harriet Klausner, which must be one of the signs of the apocalypse. ( )

There really isn't much to say about the story, because it's not the most original. Girl is fatally ill, girls meets vampire...you can see where this is going. Despite it's predictability, the characters are dynamic enough to carry the story.

Starts off very slow but, if you're a fan of the genre, you'll probably be happy that you stuck with it. ( )