Cerridwen’s Tears

Skye’s debut novel suffers from a few missteps but ultimately builds a fun world with clear plans for a series. Lara Hennessey is a nurse and widow living outside of Baltimore. She thinks she’s a perfectly ordinary person, until her new neighbor, Aedan, a vampire, changes her entire world. This narrative is standard paranormal romance fare: a special woman falls for a brooding, handsome, and otherworldly man while learning secrets about her heritage and trying to stop a killer. The unique element is the worldbuilding, which dives into faerie lore—Lara is of the Daoine Sidhe faerie lineage—while complicating vampire lore. Lara and Aedan are both stock characters, and in order to justify him being possessive and overprotective, the story alternates between playing up her considerable powers and making her conveniently weak. There is also a very unpleasant rape scene that will put some readers off. Fans of paranormal romance who like the comfort of familiarity will enjoy this series opener. (BookLife)