First Drop of Crimson by Jeaniene Frost

I dropped Jeaniene Frost's Cat & Bones series awhile back. There was just something about them (Cat more so than Bones) that didn't agree with me. Or maybe it was the plots. Or whatever, it just had a bad aftertaste. I think the sex scenes in the last one I read turned me off too. Anyway, I've not been reading her books but when I saw this one, set in Cat's world but featuring secondary characters in their own stories, I was interested.

I barely remembered Spade and Denise drew a blank for me. Denise's backstory, the one where her husband is murdered by vampires, has traumatized her and made her afraid of vamps so it was interesting that when she needed help, she called Spade, one of Bones's turning buddies and oldest friends, when a demon threatens her family. Naturally, he drops everything and rushes to her side since she's Cat's best friend. Together, they're both fighting awareness of the other, an attraction that started (I think) in the first book, Halfway to the Grave. The romance between these two takes an awful long time to simmer - about half the book. Maybe it was too subtle for me and I certainly could be missing details that were shared in the books I haven't read so there's that to consider. It ended pretty well and I am planning to read the next one, Eternal Kiss of Darkness, out this summer and featuring Mencheres, Spade and Bones's sire. Mencheres and Ian were both pleasant cast members in Crimson. Can we assume that Ian might be focused on in book three?