How to Keep an Author Alive

There really isn’t much to say about this one. I thought it was going to be completely different. The title has Alive in it yet there isn’t anything in the entire novel that even slightly hints to keeping the author alive. I was expecting someone to be trying to destroy Cooper and Justice as a vampire would get roped in against his will to save him cause he can’t get paid if his boss is dead. I found the low angst very low burn romance of this story to be more ‘how to get caught by an author’ or ‘the author I fell for,’ than ‘how to keep an author alive’.

Beyond that, the relationship was just mellow. It never actually grew. The two characters don’t spend enough time together. Whenever a chance to spend time together would arise the author didn’t let it happen. One good example of this is when Cooper makes it clear he wants Justice to come to a book signing with him. But then it’s weeks later in the next chapter and another scene that doesn’t really involve them growing together is happening. Showing them going to the signing together, and interacting in a space that is part of Cooper’s world that he chose for Justice to be a part of would’ve been a great opportunity to show them coming together as a couple. Telling the story in weeks passed is a nice touch but the on-page time almost felt like it was setting up for things to happen and then they always happened off-page.

That was my takeaway from this story. All the things that would lend themselves to a budding relationship may have been hinted at but never fully developed because they happened in the spaces, weeks, and months between the chapters which, of course, was off-page. This story read like a lot of missed opportunity as if it had hit the edge of creating a solid relationship and then stalled without crossing over into the line of developing it. It was a great concept but just didn’t deliver. I honestly didn’t love or hate it. This was a very meh experience for me. Just one of those books that technically didn’t use the page time to give off the energy that its sales pitch promised.