Title: American Vampire

Author: Jennifer Armintrout

Publisher: Mira 2011

Genre: Vampires

Pages: 336

Rating:  4/ 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Vampires; A to Z -- A; Mount TBR

How I Got It: I own it!

Buried in the Heartland is a town that no one enters or leaves. Graf McDonald somehow becomes its first visitor in more than five years…and he was only looking for a good party. Unfortunately, Penance, Ohio, is not that place. And after having been isolated for so long, they do not like strangers at all.

Jessa's the only one to even remotely trust him, and she's desperate for the kind of protection that only a vampire like Graf can provide. Supplies are low, the locals are ornery for a sacrifice and there's a monster more powerful than Graf lurking in the woods. New men are hard to come by in this lonesome town, and this handsome stranger might be Jessa's only hope for salvation.

Every once in a while I enjoy a good book of romance fluff.  It's a great change of pace from deeper, more complex books.  I am now going to add a variation to the romance fluff--the paranormal fluff. This book was a fun, fast-paced, slightly scary, paranormal fluff book.  And that's okay.  It's not anything I would rave about and force others to read, but it was an entertaining book. 

Graf was great as a more traditional (*not sparkly*) vampire.  He was tough in all the right places.  It took him a really long time to stop looking at Jessa as food, although he never thought of the others as anything else.  He was a vampire...  and I really adored him.  Jessa was much harder to like, but that was kind of the point.  She wasn't an angel.  She wasn't a damsel.  She was just a young woman with a past.  I appreciated that Armintrout didn't have her fall in love with Graf on the spot.  Those stories to be a bit boring.  This took some time. 

The story was fun, a bit scary, and definitely high-paced.  I saw most of the twists and turns coming, but that didn't make them any less fun.  It was a quick, but satisfying read.  I'm adding Armintrout to my list of authors to check out.