REVIEW, Lover Awakened

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there’s a deadly war raging between vampires and their slayers. And there exists a secret band of brothers like no other – six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Of these, Zsadist is the most terrifying member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

    Prod dets

Lover Awakened

Series: Black Dagger Brotherhood series, book 3

Pub: 2006, Piatkus

Author: J. R. Ward

Cat: paranormal romance

Format: paperback (mid); 527 pp w/ 51 chapters

Whose: Zsadist & Bella

Age Range: adult

            Synopsis

A former blood slave, the vampire Zsadist still bears the scars from a past filled with suffering and humiliation. Renowned for his unquenchable fury and sinister deeds, he is a savage, feared by humans and vampires alike. Anger is his only companion, and terror is his only passion – until he rescues a beautiful aristocrat from the evil Lessening Society.

    

Bella is instantly entranced by the seething power Zsadist possesses. But even as their desire for one another begins to overtake them both, Zsadist’s thirst for vengeance against Bella’s tormentors’ drives him to the brink of madness. Now, Bella must help her lover overcome the wounds of his tortured past, and find a future with her...

     my Thoughts (review)

This is a book that can rub you the wrong way depending on what your own personal history is about. And you should be warned of this before you read it. It’s about the after effects of sexual brutality (raped) for centuries at the hands of the mistress who pulled him out for her own use just after his transition. It’s not light in any way, really dumping into that type of mental pain that he went through and him reliving it by simple, everyday touches smells from the opposite sex.

Bella had been taken by the lessens and Z is doing everything he can to get her out. The only problem that he’s not quite ready for what he’ll find on the other side of the whole thing.

Bella, she knows a slight amount of what it’s like to be taken and hidden in a dark hole but she can’t being to understand what it was like for Z.

 

I really did like this book, I loved going through that with Z and it was really like that. We got to watch him become something more than what he had been. And even though he’s still an ass, you learn to love him in a way that before this you never thought you would want to.

What annoyed me about this was Bella, she just.... she was always meant to be this understanding, nice, loving woman that seemed to do what she did to help Z but that wasn’t it. She’s selfish, and unfortunately you don’t get this full view of that until you read the novella (which you can find in the guide) but it makes you see it when you look back. She wanted him and she would have done anything she had to make him hers. Even leaving him. Because that to was for her own good, because she couldn’t deal with the fact that Z was fucked up and needed a lot of time to come to terms with love.

Still, I liked this book; I liked the bits of John, of how he became a part of the brotherhood family. How they looked at him as if he was already their own. It’s the first time you get to really see hard times he’s lived with his whole life.

Series

Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, [tb], Lover Revealed, Lover Unbound, Lover Enshrined, Lover Avenged, Lover Mine, Lover Unleashed, Lover Reborn,

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