I was very much leery heading into this book because it has such mixed reviews all the way across the board. I wasn't sure which end of the spectrum my opinion would fall into, but I find myself right in the middle. The book wasn't bad in my opinion, but it also wasn't anything really special.

This book is the first in the Sweetblood series and is about Mackenzie and Dom. Mackenzie is what's known as a sweetblood to vampires in this world. Her blood is very addictive and most vampires who start drinking from a sweetblood are unable to stop themselves before killing the person because of how good they taste. Dom is a vampire that's part of the Agency, which is essentially the police of the vampire world. One night while Mackenzie is taking pictures in a cemetery for a possible movie location, she finds Dom laying on the ground at the edge of the woods. Extremely weak from a fight he just had with some Darkbloods (a.k.a. the rogue vampires in this world), he cannot resist her blood and needs the strength he will get from it. After barely being able to rip himself away from drinking her dry, he takes Mackenzie home, wipes her memories, and gives her a bit of his own blood to make sure she heals quicker. However, what he doesn't realize is that their blood sharing has created a new, very rare, and very powerful bond between them. He tries to stay away from her, but neither of them seem able to resist each other with the new bond in place.

Now, like I said above, this book wasn't bad, but I did find myself dragging my feet through it. There wasn't a whole lot of action and there were hardly any suspenseful moments. There were a few, but it was very few and far between. The romance between Mackenzie and Dom was also a little too easy. I'm sometimes annoyed when relationships go back and forth in romance novels, but this was the other side of the spectrum. They had a few tiffs, but mostly it was just too easy for them. In addition, I liked Dom's character, but Mackenzie had some annoying "typical female heroine" moments going on that made me roll my eyes at their predictability and stupidity. But, she wasn't the worst about it, just a few times where you just know she's getting herself into trouble and she's too dumb to realize it.

Another thing that bugged me was that the world building was pretty minimal. What vampires are capable of and their weaknesses are revealed, but it seemed like new things just came along in the nick of time when they weren't a trait we already learned about. This could just be first-book-in-a-series-syndrome. But, I think we could have done with a little convo between Mackenzie and Dom about his world and the truths about vampires. It just would have made it easier to understand certain abilities they do have, why they can eat regular food, etc. Where they came from originally isn't really described as well. So, I just would have liked some more world building in that aspect.

Overall, it was pretty mediocre. Nothing really terrible about it, but nothing that really stands out either. I will read on in the series, because once I start a series, I have to continue. But, I probably wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anyone. Although it's not bad, there are much better vampire books out there to occupy your time with. We'll see how the series progresses though, maybe it'll get better.