📚’A dark contemporary vampire #romance.’ Rosie’s #BookReview of HAVOC by T.L. Hawke #BookTwitter #booktwt
Havoc by T.L. Hawke
3 stars
Havoc is Book One of the Drakonians, a dark contemporary vampire romance.
Set in California, the book opens in a secret laboratory location, where four vampires have been imprisoned and experimented on for years. Into this setting young geneticist Harmony is brought to study the second heart that these vampires have. Shocked to discover the existence of vampires and the brutality metered out to them in the laboratory, Harmony enables the subjects of the experiments to escape, ensuing an immediate manhunt as the five of them go on the run.
Over the remaining 900 plus pages—yes, it is a whopper of a book—Havoc and Harmony play out an enemies to lovers romance with plenty of will-they, won’t-they batted back and forth. Meanwhile, the hunters squabble among themselves as to who they can blame for the vampires’ escape and who will take the prize for their recapture.
The dark romantic element of the story involves a high number of sexual encounters, some with violence and bordering, on occasion, on erotica.
While I liked the premise of this story, I thought that it fell short in several areas, particularly character development, with much of Harmony and Havoc’s to-ing and fro-ing within their on-off relationship. I was also concerned by the amount of modern-day American mannerisms given to the long-lived vampires who had been held captive for decades, if not longer.
In other areas, I could tell that the authors definitely had fun writing this book; however, I felt that the mish-mash of action heroes and femme fatales, with many of them given comedic character names, was a little too much and more suited to a satirical piece of writing than a romance.
Book Description:
Imprisoned for years in a government research facility, four vampires unexpectedly find themselves on the run, with the scientist who unintentionally saved them.
After close to a century in a laboratory run by the secret government Department 13, where he and three of his fellow Drakonians are mercilessly experimented on, Havoc resigns himself to his fate. Until one day a new scientist arrives and changes everything…
Not only does she open the cage that holds him captive and facilitates the escape he never thought was possible, she also injects him with an unknown serum that triggers a monumental change in him. A change he’s been avoiding all his life, but is now unable to stop.
On the run, he’s finally forced to accept that his father is dead, making him the Drakonian King. It’s now up to him to save his people, all while resisting his uncontrollable feelings for the woman who changed him, and in the process, ruined his life.
Excited to be working on a top secret genetics project, Dr. Harmony Holmes arrives for her first day on the job full of hope that she will be able to further her career prospects, and also build a relationship with her estranged father. What she finds instead shocks her to her core.
Four vampires held prisoner and tortured mercilessly.
Driven by despair, she opens one of the cages and sets off a string of events that change her life and the lives of everyone around her forever.
Now she’s on the run, fighting for her life, while at the same time trying to resist her uncontrollable need for the vampire with the golden eyes, who hates her…
