The Others: Conception by Sarah McCarty

From the back cover:

An unwilling victim of an experiment gone wrong, mother to a child that shouldn’t exist, Eden Lavery knows only one person strong enough to stand between the Coalition’s fanatical quest for immortality and their threat to her daughter; Dusan Knight. Six foot three of solid muscle, Deuce wears his power with the easy confidence that comes from six centuries of commanding the Chosen, the inspiration for vampire lore. But Deuce isn’t just the source of legend. He’s the man she loves. The man she’d ultimately betrayed.


From the moment Eden reenters his life, holding the miracle of a Chosen child in her arms, Deuce burns with the need to complete their joining. Everything about Eden, from her sassy sense of humor to her delectably stacked body was made for him. But some things are easier decided than done. Amidst a race for survival, against an enemy that cannot be destroyed for fear of extinction, Deuce must fight for the future of his people and to convince Eden the passion between them is more than illusion. She is his Chosen mate, and nothing, not her fears, the Coalition, nor death itself will take her away from him.

Ermmm, what is with EC's covers? I am not ashamed to say that I do tend to judge books by their covers. There have been many new authors found b/c I liked the cover. If I hadn't heard so many good things about Sarah McCarty, I wouldn't have looked twice at this book. It kinda looks like she's trying to ingest his lips.

I loved this book. Sarah McCarty is definitely going places. Of course it wasn't until after I read the book that I found out that this series may not continue. *sigh* It's just my luck.

So Eden Lavery's grandfather is one fucked up old man. He's obsessed with immortality. Dude, he's, like, 89. If you want to be immortal, do you really want to do it in an old man's body? Anyway, the book opens up with a bang. Eden is literally hanging from the ceiling by her bound hands while gramps and her uncle whip her to get the location of Eden's vampire lover, Dusan. Of course gramps doesn't want to hurt her. He just needs to know where Eden stashed the vamp. In bust an army of men to come to Deuce's rescue, who just happened to be in the floorboards right underneath Eden's feet. Unconcious, of course. So while his men are dragging Deuce out, the leader of the pack (he's really the leader of the Pack) tries to get Eden down. Eden convinces him to run after she realizes gramps plans to blow the whole place up. *sigh*

Fast forward a year. Deuce thinks Eden is dead. Which sucks because the Chosen only mate once and it's for life. So when Eden turns up on his mountain with a baby no less, he is elated. Well, almost elated. Obviously Eden was getting it on with some other guy and he didn't know if he could accept that. Well, turns out that Eden was actually inseminated with Deuce's sperm and voila!, Eden's daughter is also Deuce's daughter.

So here's my problem. Eden escaped five minutes after a c-section, baby in tow. Because of a voice whispering in her head to run. I can accept that a mother would do anything for her newborn, including getting up off the table five minutes after a c-section and running. What I, under no circumstances, can accept is the fact that when Eden came face-to-face with Deuce for the first time in a year, she was aroused. Um, dude. You just had a c-section. Your stitches are pulling out. Aroused? Yeah, pull the other one.

So overall, this was a really good book. The Chosen are a very interesting group of people. Eden and Deuce's daughter is the first child born to a Chosen in hundreds of years. So she's something of a miracle. Because they have to find out how she was conceived, Deuce can't allow Eden to kill her grandfather. Obviously Eden doesn't really care what Deuce says and tries to escape to keep Jalina (the daughter), safe.

This was the first (and possibly last) book in the series. I thought that the information about the species in general was a little on the light side. I could definitely have done with more details about how the Chosen and Pack came to be allies. More about the Chosen in general, really.

There was lots of action and blood sucking in this book. Not for the squeamish!

4 out of 5 stars.