The Familiar by Diana R. Bascarau

Description from Amazon:

Beth Clarke came to Los Angeles to become an actress.

Instead, she became a vampire’s familiar, managing Elias von Martyrom’s life, cleaning up after his parties, and waiting six years to be turned.

Then, one day, Elias’s most important guest is found dead.

Murdering another vampire is one of the few crimes the vampire world takes seriously. Elias is arrested, locked beneath the Council chambers, and scheduled for execution in one month.

Beth knows he didn’t do it.

Unfortunately, knowing and proving are two very different things.

With a bizarre list of suspects, an aristocratic vampire council, and a charming historian who keeps asking dangerous questions, Beth has one month to solve a murder she has absolutely no idea how to investigate.

And the closer she gets to the truth, the more she begins to wonder whether saving Elias is really the same thing as saving herself.

 

This sounded like an interesting angle on a vampire story as you never really get to “find out” what a familiar actually does. And it turned into less of this and more of a traumatic bonded story.

The rules that Elias has Beth following are ridiculous and the fact that she accepted them as she did, showed the level of abuse (yes I’ll describe it like that) she was willing to endure all to be turned one day as well as to be accepted by Elias.

Once the murder has occurred and Beth moves through the investigation she does, the book has me divided. For one thing, I admire her tenacity, but personally, I didn’t enjoy the victim she became. I understand that this is what the author was trying to show about Beth’s character, but I couldn’t connect with her decisions, and this made the story less enjoyable for me. I also figured out Damian’s part very early on, and even though he was eventually trying to throw her a lifeline, I understood the direction she took with him.

However, the ending was rather unfulfilling. I think I expected something huge to happen that would change what had been occurring through the years, but it was almost like saying you can’t win no matter how hard you try. And I know some have agreed with Beth’s final decision, but I just want to shake her and say why? I suppose that’s what makes everyone different.

Due to the editing mistakes, and while I appreciate what the author was trying to show in a different way, it just didn’t work for me in the way I wanted it to, so I give this three stars.

Thanks to Voracious Readers Only and the author for the ARC.