Please note that this book was provided to me by the author. However, that has in no way affected this review, which expresses my true and impartial opinion.I don’t know C.D. Hussey. I have never met her (we live in different continents) and most probably I never will. I hadn’t heard of her prior to reading her debut novel La Luxure: Discover Your Blood Lust. I don’t think many people have. But something tells me that this is about to change because she is success in the making. She is clearly “NY Times best-selling author” material. I daresay some of the actual NY Times best-selling romance novels couldn’t hold a candle to La Luxure.I should note that I am a long-time fan and heavy reader of paranormal romance and especially of the vampire genre. I’ve read my share of Anne Rice, J. R. Ward, Charlene Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton, L. J. Smith, Lara Adrian and, yes, Stephenie Meyer, to name only a few. It’s been some time since I was that positively surprised by a novel of this genre. Or, better said, of a subgenre, since I can’t say it’s purely “vampire” or “paranormal”. But it’s a compelling read nonetheless!The book is set in the heart of the French Quarter, New Orleans, where La Luxure, a bar catering for the needs of a special clientele, is found. La Luxure holds a strange attraction for our heroine, Julia Brown, a single city engineer in her late twenties traveling from the Midwest to post-Katrina New Orleans on business. That’s where she meets Armand (very Anne Rice, right?) Laroque, the proprietor of La Luxure. Even though Julia is smart (she has always been good at math) she finds she’s the girl-next-door type, far from the “90-60-90” standard of beauty with her medium length brown hair and her brown eyes and her medium height. Now, mysterious, sexy Armand, with his gorgeous dark hair, intense hazel eyes, pale skin, his 6'2'' height and his muscular body, which is decorated with various tattoos and piercings, not to speak of his delicious purr of a voice and his impeccable manners, fascinates her; she is drawn to him in the “my heart just skipped a few beats” and “my stomach is making pirouettes” kind of way. It’s the first time any guy has made her feel that way and, since she is determined to step out of her comfort zone during her stay in New Orleans, she decides not to resist temptation, act upon her feelings and see where it gets her. The bad thing is Armand is apparently the leader of some underground obscure New Orleans Community and, on top of that, it is very possible he is responsible for the death of a La Luxure female patron who is found exsanguinated in some back French Quarter alley. Julia finds herself torn between her intense attraction to Armand and common sense which dictates her to flee. Both main characters of the story were aptly portrayed and highly engaging. I felt for them, I understood their ways, shared some of their views. They made me laugh and they got me emotional at all the right points. Above all, the best thing about them was that they felt REAL and that was what I enjoyed the most about them. Notwithstanding, I feel I should note that many of the other characters, apart from the central ones, were also interesting enough: Dave, the “frat boy” type who hasn’t really grown up and has a thing for Julia; Clare, Julia’s all too different but loving and caring sister; Slade, the hugely muscled, hostile but committed La Luxure bartender and long-time friend of Armand’s; Cindi, the tan, 50-something hotel bartender with the over processed, bleached blond 80s hair.The portrayal of the city was also very vivid but not at all boring. I particularly liked the Mardi Gras parade and the storm parts. I’ve always wanted to visit New Orleans but now, thanks to C.D. Hussey, it’s among my priority destinations.The sex parts (well, it is more of a single but really long and highly gratifying sex scene!) were steamy hot and made me want go through them again and again. If anything, they were where Armand was at his absolutely, incredibly, scorchingly hottest, and that should say something about them, right? And, since I’m a devoted J.R. Ward fan, I can’t help but provide one reference I really loved: Normally, Julia liked her romance novels to be a little edgier, with leather-clad, tattooed vampires that had drug problems or were once sex slaves. Go Phury and Zsadist!C.D. Hussey’s La Luxure is a must-read for everyone who enjoys romance novels with a twist. It is written in a vivid, fresh style that makes you keep reading even though it’s past midnight and you’re working tomorrow (that’s what happened to me, anyway). The author surely knows how to build her story to maximise interest and she seems to genuinely care for her characters (what more proof does the reader need than the fact that she sees herself as Julia -being an engineer from the Midwest, with her belly dancing and hula hoop lessons.)My only note to the author is that the text can benefit from a closer proofreading for the occasional typo. All the same, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read the next one in the series!
