Rating: 4.5 stars

In book one of a seductive sapphic paranormal fantasy, a vampire hunter goes undercover at a mysterious university and falls in love with her roommate, an alluring vampire.

“Then her red eyes are on mine, gentle, deadly. She takes her time kissing my neck. I pull her closer and say: Bite me.”

In the mists of the Scottish Highlands is a university where vampire students study alongside humans.

Rebecca Charity is a vampire hunter undercover at the university, searching for the mysterious Book of Blood and Roses, a lost compendium of ways to kill vampires. If she finds it, she’ll be one step closer to avenging her parents, who were slain by those creatures of the night.

But when Rebecca arrives, she finds something unexpected: a coffin. Her new roommate is Aliz Astra, scion of one of the most powerful vampire families… and the most beautiful woman Rebecca has ever met.

The maddeningly gorgeous Aliz is everything that Rebecca has always hated, but also everything she ever wanted, and now Rebecca doesn’t know if she wants to kiss or kill her.

When Aliz rescues her from a vampire attack one moonlit night, she accidentally makes Rebecca her familiar. Now, they must work together to break the curse, but as they get closer to solving the mystery, Rebecca and Aliz get closer, too.

But can a vampire hunter ever fall in love with a vampire?

I received a digital copy of this book through the publisher on NetGalley for an honest review.

From beginning to end, I enjoyed reading The Book of Blood and Roses immensely. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I chose this book to read, but it met all of my expectations. The author does a wonderful job of giving me, as a reader, enough background on the main character, Rebecca, to understand her dislike of vampires and how she comes to be the vampire hunter I see as in the beginning of the story. As her story goes on you see Rebecca’s perspective when it comes to vampires change as she comes to realize when attending this school to blend in that not all vampires want to hurt humans.

What I also enjoyed about The Book of Blood and Roses was seeing the slow development of Rebecca and Aliz’s relationship. While this book does seem to describe their relationship as enemies-to-lovers, I’m not sure I see it that way. Only because while Rebecca doesn’t like vampires in the beginning of the book, I felt like she was pretty attracted to Aliz very early on in the story. I would say as soon as she sees her before she even knows that they are going to be living together as roommates, which doesn’t seem to happen for a little while because she somehow manages to avoid discovering that she even has a roommate.

I also enjoyed seeing Rebecca as a vampire hunter for Callisto and learning more about her background in that regard. I found that aspect of her life to be very interesting to me because I wondered what that was like for her. It was also interesting seeing what her relationship was like with Penny and how that impacted her life once she began attending this school. I will say though that I wasn’t really all that fond of Penny from the beginning because even though Rebecca seemed to trust her, I felt like from the start, she just always seemed cold and distant anytime her and Rebecca talked to each other. And it just felt odd to me since she was the character that introduced Rebecca to the world of vampires and because of how Rebecca felt about her throughout. Then again, Rebecca had been a part of this organization for a couple years at this point and had made zero progress on moving up so maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised.  

If there was anything with this book I didn’t enjoy it would have to be that the truth surrounding the death of Rebecca’s parent’s felt rushed. I honestly wasn’t expecting to find that out in this book since Rebecca hadn’t initially been told what had happened to her parents when she first joined Callisto. Since this is supposed to be a series, I was expecting the truth surrounding her parents to occur later in the series, not something that becomes a main plot reveal in this book to be used for the next book. I think the reason it bothers me so much is because of the way she finds out more than anything. While the way she finds out is pretty cool overall and it does take a moment for the dots to be connected, I do also feel like it’s a rushed plot in the story. It makes sense with everything that happens to her character, but I also felt like it could’ve been better explained and better fleshed out.

Overall though, I really enjoyed reading The Book of Blood and Roses as I found I enjoyed Rebecca’s character and seeing her relationship with Aliz continue to develop. I also enjoyed reading this book since it was from the perspective of a vampire hunter attending a school with vampires while trying to blend in and learning more about her life as a vampire hunter. Just wasn’t all too fond of how the truth surrounding the main characters parent’s deaths gets revealed. Highly recommend this book for those who enjoy reading books with vampires, enjoy romance and wouldn’t mind reading a series. The Book of Blood and Roses was published on January 13, 2026, for those interested in giving this book a read.