Customer Reviews

Twilight Hunger

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I can't make up my mind about this one. Parts I really really liked, other things about it... I'm not so sure about. Usually when I feel ambivalent about a novel, I end up disliking it. I think what I expected from this book was a romance, but it needs to be approached from a general vampire fiction stand point.
Morgan DeSilva is a struggling screen writer who falls in love with the vampire Dante after she reads his journals containing his life story. Thinking him a long dead mad man, she uses his story as the story line for a series of popular movies. Fast forward 5 years, Morgan is dying from her Belladonna antigen and on the brink of winning an Oscar. Dante comes to her small town in Maine, hunted by the surviving members of the DPI. He is furious to find out that Morgan has been publishing his secrets. Can he put aside his mistrust and safe Morgan?
That is plot one of the story. I thought Morgan and Dante needed to talk more, and I really didn't like Morgan. I think Maggie Shayne went overboard on making her seem like a poor little rich girl and she's plagerizing her screen plays which made her come across as basically dishonest. It seems like Dante has been completely rewritten from what we were told about him in Twilight Vows. Sure, he mentions things from Vows, but it seems more like an after thought than to explain why he is the way he is. And beware one very creepy, graphic journal entry involving Dante and a woman of loose morals. I liked plot two a lot better.
Maxine is a young woman who has a conspiracy theory for everything. One night, she goes to investigate the burning wreckage of the DPI HQ. She sees a man crawl from the burning building and picks up a disk he drops. On the disk she finds information on vampires that the DPI knows about. The next day a man calls her, threating her mother and friends if she says a word about what see saw the night before. 5 years later, she and her cop pal, Lou, find themselves tangling with the DPI agent Frank Stiles when a friend of Lou is found murdered by a vampire. The trail leads to Morgan since Dante's, the character in her movies, is identical to the DPI's file on Dante.
It's a good thing I liked this plot line better because it took up most of the book. I liked the suspicious Mad Maxie a lot better than Janet Dailey-esque Morgan. The only really creepy thing about this plot line, is Maxie's attraction to Lou who is twenty years older than she is.
This is a fast paced, fairly interesting read. I'd give 3 and half stars; however, I think more could have been done to make this story better. I think it would have been much better if Maxine had been the lead female character. Yes, I lead more toward like than dislike on this one but I hope Maggie Shayne does better in the next Twilight book. Twilight Hunger wasn't quite up to par with the rest of the series.

Maggie is definitely the Queen of vampire romances in my book. She's back again with a new installment of her Twilight series - bringing us some very interesting characters:

Dante - a vampire on a mission to discover who is the individual spilling all their secrets but ends up finding his soul mate. Will he love her or kill her?

Morgan DeSilva - a sickly screenwriter who finds a diary and falls in love the author and uses his stories to make them her own. Does she believe the dreams she's having every night or is it really happening?

Maxine Stuart - adopted daughter who owns her own company (barely keeping it afloat) with a good heart, good friends and she's in love with a cop who thinks of her as a child but Maxine perseveres. She finds out she has a connection to Morgan and is willing to do anything to save Morgan from the path she's chosen. Can she save Morgan and will her love ever be reciprocated?

Sarafina - a gypsy vampire who's trying to keep her only remaining family member close to her and no one else. Can she hold Dante or must she release him to his heart's desire?

Lou - a good cop who's always after truth and justice but doesn't want to believe the truth that's staring him in the face. Will he realize that you can't run from love?

Frank Stiles - the bad penny from the secret government agency "DPI" who keeps turning up. Will he ever give up his hatred of vampires?

The paths of all these individuals eventually cross, bringing you a story filled with courage, love, trust and a deep hatred. I love these series and am always anxiously awaiting the next release. You won't be disappointed with Twilight Hunger or any of the novels in the series (I've read them all) and you WILL savor every moment from start to finish.

Suffering from a rare blood disease, Morgan D'Silva has set goals for herself that she wants to hit quickly. The adopted daughter of a famous screen writer and renowned actress, she has always dreamed of being a screen writer herself. Yet tragedy has recently struck her adopted family, and not only did she lose her parents, she lost everything she knew and was familiar with because of the enormous debts they had accrued. Not knowing exactly where to start, she takes an offer from a close family friend to stay in a recently purchased older home. Little does she know she'll not only find her inspiration here, but the love she thought she'd never have.

The vampire,Dante had never had a problem before hiding in open sight. But suddenly it is like the world in general, and a particular bunch of vampire hunters specifically, know every move he is going to make. They've found all his hideouts, know all of his secrets. How could this be?? No one knew these things. Fleeing yet another attempt on his undead life, he retreats to a home that he had owned a hundred years before. He is shocked to see that it has been totally restored to the way it was when he lived there, almost down to the last detail. He is even more shocked to see the human mortal woman who lives there, Morgan, and discover that she is one of "the chosen". For only the chosen are able to be changed into vampires and survive. She was his for the taking....And she was calling to HIM in the night. Dante. How? How could she know his name? And that this was once his home?

Dante soon finds that Morgan knows everything about him...secrets from hundreds of years past. He has to discover how she knows, and who she has told. Could she be the traitor who has turned the vampire hunters on him??

Maggie Shayne has created an incredible story of intrigue, the paranormal, and love story that is to `die' for. Her characters are so true to life personality, strength and weakness wise, that we can totally relate to them. She made me cringe at some of the things the vampire, Dante, did, while at the same time sympathizing and falling in love with him. She interweaves a secondary story line that will shock you, and pulls it off beautifully without taking away from Dante and Morgan's story.

If you're a fan of vampires, you don't want to miss this read!! TWILIGHT HUNTER is a stand alone story, one you'll fall in love with, but is also tied to a series of books by Maggie Shayne, her WINGS IN THE NIGHT series. I had never read them before, and must tell you, this reviewer is on a book hunt for her backlist!!

TWILIGHT HUNGER is an interesting story, but the author's habitual use of one particular phrase drove me to distraction.

God, I hate it when she does that. God, I wish she'd stop. God, what's going on here? It seemed like in every paragraph she had a "God, ...." phrase. On some pages, it literally *is* every paragraph, at least once. If you took out all of those "God," and just capitalized the first letter in the word after the comma, it would work just fine. Apparently every single character in her book thinks or talks like that, from the very old gypsy vampiress to the young private investigator chick. Highly, highly annoying.

Obviously, the phrasing made an impression upon me. It was bad enough that I read the end of the book to see if I really wanted to plod through that annoyance. I did finish the book eventually, but the book is easy to put down and quite predictable. I'm not impressed with this woman's writing style, but I may give her another chance because reviews seem to indicate her other books were better.

Paranormal romance is truly one of my favorite genres. I love seeing new books by Charlaine Harris and Kim Harrison. Twilight Hunger was purchased with the hopes of finding a new author for me to enjoy. Oh how very wrong I was...

There is not ONE likable character in the entire book, and believe me there are A LOT of characters to choose from. Morgan is the weak heroine that can only be saved by the handsome vampire Dante, who was turned by his great aunt evil Sarafina. There's plenty of story there, if Ms. Shayne has left out some of the ridiculous melodrama, that even middle school kids would find over done, and not thrown in lost twin sisters and hooker mothers. I'm really not sure how many stories she was trying to write, but in my opinion failed to write one that holds up through out the book.

I got the book for $4.99...and now I know why. I couldn't even finish it. I'm thinking of using it for firewood this winter, at least that way it will be some use to this world.

Once upon a time, I read an article that said anyone can get published...just look at the sludge that is on airport gift shop shelves. This book is what they were talking about...

Ms. Shayne begins the book by thanking someone for encouraging this novel. But in truth, Ms. Shayne should smack that person.

The novel begins with the main character finding Dante's diaries and believing they are works of fiction. She revises these novels into screenplays and eventually makes blockbuster movies.

The story is much longer than I have defined and has winning moments but it is plagued with trying to do too much. Ms. Shayne was obviously trying to create another series from this novel and so there are more charcters than probably need to be. There is too little character development of the 'right'charcters, main characters, and too much development of sub-characters.

If you are a loyal fan of this genre you might enjoy this book.
If you are a fan of Ms. Shayne, as I am, you will probably be a little disappointed.

In trying to be fair to this book because of its predecessors, I find myself holding back from what my real thoughts are. I loved the first three Wings in the Night books, first published as Silhouette Shadows.The characters and premise of the books were interesting and fascinating. I loved them.

TWILIGHT HUNGER was a great disappointment to me. I neither liked nor related to the characters. The heroine struck me as selfish and self-centered.She wasn't strong and had little or no compassion for anyone or anything other than herself. It seemed Shayne was trying for a wasting away, fragile heroine, but failed. Certainly the heroine was wasting away, but her personality made me hope that she would die. And soon. Very painfully. It's not that I didn't like the heroine. Okay, it was.

The hero, Dante, was only very slightly more likable. Shayne was trying for the brooding, angsty, tortured hero and ended up with a brooding, angsty monster. Yes, a monster. A bit more civilized than your horror-type vampire, but a monster nonetheless. He was perfect for the heroine in that he seemed just an uncompassionate as she was.

As for the plot - well, there was a romance.

Somewhere.

I keep looking for it. I'm still looking for it.

As for the suspense part - well, it was silly. Pointless. I'm not sure why the author chose to bring in this whole other subplot with the secondary characters, other than to prove how truly devious people could be. And how loving they could be to a heroine who didn't deserve their compassion. OTOH, having a truly twisted ex-government agent hunting down vampires is not the most original idea, but wasn't too bad.

Unfortunately, I'm going to think twice, maybe three times, before I buy another Maggie Shayne Wings in the Night book. There was nothing driving in this book, nothing that gripped me or made me want to continue. I managed to get through it by sheer willpower. Fans of vampire romances may want to go ahead and pick this one up, but don't expect it to be compelling.

Desperate to escape from the Hollywood gossip that engulfs her following the deaths of her famous adopted parents, Morgan DeSilva flees to the Maine coast. Though a continent away, Morgan plans to finish a script that should help pay off the enormous debt her parents left behind.

Perhaps it is her mourning for her loss or just the desperation of needing to write, but Morgan struggles to get anything done. However, she lucks out when she finds the aging journals of Dante, who claimed to be a vampire. Using his work as a springboard, Morgan becomes a success though haunted now by elaborate dreams of Dante. He wants her too, but can he trust this Chosen One with his vampiric secrets especially in light of an investigator closing in on the undead?

Fans of vampire romance know that no one is quite as dependable as Maggie Shayne is to provide a powerful tale of supernatural love. TWILIGHT HUNGER, the seventh Shayne vampire novel, is an enticing tale that stars two deserving lead characters. Empathetic readers will definitely want them to make a life together. The story line is loaded with action as Dante shows up in the flesh even as the investigator closes in on him and his beloved, but trust keeps them apart. As always, Ms. Shayne makes an impossible creature seem so real and romantic that sub-genre fans will claim that she must have found some old journals in a Kingly Maine home.

Harriet Klausner

I agree with the other reviewers who say there is no real charactor development and no actual romance. None of the charactors are particularly likeable or very interesting. And none of the plotlines seemed to go anywhere.

Morgan: is a whiney, sickly young woman who, as one reviewer said, seemed to spend most of the book dying. She is obsessed with Dante's journals and falls madly in love with him despite the fact she believes he's long dead and was a "madman" who thought he was a vampire. Hardly a stable personality and she sure doesn't endear herself to anyone. The vaguely described "psycic connection" between some vampires and Chosen was added as a sort of psuedo-explaination of why Morgan and Dante are "meant to be" but it just doesn't suffice.

Dante: the romantic lead. All he does is get shot with crossbows and bleed a lot. He's originally pissed at Morgan for putting his story on the big screen. But for no apparent reason he abruptly becomes crazy for Morgan -- a sickly, whiney woman at best -- and makes mad, passionate love to her (and bites er all over) even while she's busy dying. Yum, yum. What a guy. He even attacks the only one willing to give him a break -- Lou -- twice. A real hero.

Maxine: a little more interesting, particularly her smart mouth and take-charge attitude. But she also gets weak and whiney when all her friends start being hurt, dying etc. Her wanna-be romance with Lou is kind of intriguing but it doesn't get resolved so it flops in the end. And the sub-subplot of Morgan/Maxine and Lydia is just too much to take. Speak of totally over-done cliches!!

The whole book was based an one of the worst cliches -- the evil Big Brother Government who has secret agents everywhere. And apparently these are SUPER secret agents since the lead Evil Agent managed to sneak around taking pictures to threaten Max with the very day after he had been "terribly burned and scarred". If you are burned badly enough to scar -- especially on the face -- you probably aren't up to skulking around the following day.

So all-in-all, "Wings in the Night" is MUCH better. This wasn't even a "B" grade vampire story.

There are those that whine there isn't enough romance, that there was no need for the subplot and added characters. DON'T TAKE IT AS GOSPEL!! If you've read "Wings In The Night" then you'll be thrilled with "Twilight Hunger". Those that have followed and appreciated Maggie Shayne's series will without a doubt understand the need for the subplot and characters as I have a feeling we will be reading more about them in the future.

Still the same romance, still the same otherworldly charm, still the same Shayne dedication to telling a great vampire tale. It isn't necessary to read the previous books in the series, but it would help. And, if this is your first venture into the world of vampire romance, it most certainly won't be your last. Either way you're in for a spellbinding read and that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Enjoy!