Author: Z.A. Maxfield
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Pages/Word Count: 235 Pages
At a Glance: I liked this novel much more than the first, mainly because there was a great deal of action and intrigue.
Reviewed By: Sammy
Blurb: He’ll give up everything for his immortal lover…except his humanity.
Leave a note and slip away to Paris alone, Adin thought. It’ll prove to his vampire lover he doesn’t need 24/7 supervision, Adin thought. Instead, Adin lands in a surreal situation that isn’t going to endear him to Donte. At. All.
As he awaits an old foe, Ned Harwiche III, for a prearranged meeting, Adin is head butted, tossed into the back of a car…then gets the chance to acquire an artifact Harwiche had been bidding on.
Adin jumps at it, if only as payback for all the dirty tricks Harwiche has pulled over the years. To his horror, the “artifact” turns out to be an adolescent boy named Bran.
Sickened, Adin vows to help the boy out, but like Donte—like a lot of the world Adin never knew existed—Bran isn’t at all what he seems to be.
While Donte and Adin negotiate the meaning of the word “forever”, Bran is running out of time. Especially when tragedy and betrayal pit Adin’s long-cherished beliefs against Donte’s love.
Review: In book two of the Deep series, Deep Deception, author Z.A. Maxfield returns us to the enticing couple we have grown to love and, yes, hate, Donte and Adin. Adin, refusing time and again to give up his hold on all things human, finds himself in a bit of a pickle when his arch nemesis in the collecting field uses him as a switch and bait to retrieve a priceless artifact. That artifact turns out to be a boy, barely in his teens, but who is a changeling of a sort, able to delve into the minds of others, and then some. He also happens to be toxic to vampires, a real problem when your boyfriend happens to be one.
From this point, the novel becomes one twist and plot turn after another as secrets are revealed not only about Bran, the mysterious boy, but about Donte, Adin’s friend Edward, and that delightfully snarky bodyguard, Boaz. However, with each new revelation it is uncertain as to whether Donte and Adin can weather one more storm and still remain lovers. Both will have to give up something precious to them and each will have their very life threatened with death before the story ends.
I liked this novel much more than the first, mainly because there was a great deal of action and intrigue. Poor Adin seemed to be thwarted at every turn as he tried to unravel the mystery that was Bran, and the reason why he would be so sought after by less than savory opponents. Bran grew on me with every page, and I found myself quite concerned for his welfare just as Adin was. I loved that Adin’s best friend Edward, and Edward’s lover Tuan, were featured in this story—there is much more than meets the eye with these two, and I would love to see a prequel about them and how they met.
Donte, whom I alternately loved and hated, was not nearly as present in this story as the first. His love for Adin was very apparent, but he was often away for long periods of time, either brooding or hiding—I felt the story was unclear as to which most of the time. This was a prevalent theme in this story, bits and pieces left dangling, uncertainty as to Adin’s future by novel’s end, and some very confusing dream sequences where Bran was delving into Adin’s memories, which often managed to pull me out of the story and left me rather unsure if I had misread or if they were just too jumbled for me to understand.
All in all, Deep Deception gave us much more insight into Adin’s reasons for his reluctance in giving himself completely to Donte. That, coupled with a real coup as to who the true bad guy was in this novel, made for a very entertaining read.
You can buy Deep Deception here:
