Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Hayden Saint

Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance

Tags: Blood Bond, Dark, Insta-Love/Lust, Romance, Series, Vamps

Length: 73 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

This review has a couple of spoilers.

Blurb –

He came to the island to restore an ancient portrait. He didn’t expect to meet the man in the painting.

Adrian takes the commission at Mullwood House because he needs money, and space from a controlling ex boyfriend. The solitude of the manor is exactly what he needs.

When a storm traps him there for one more night, he comes face to face with Edmund Wren – the cold and magnetic owner of the house, who bears a striking resemblance to the subject of the two-hundred-year-old portrait Adrian was hired to restore.

Because the portrait isn’t of Edmund’s ancestor. It’s Edmund, and he’s been kept hungry, isolated, and captive by a bloodline of guardians sworn to guard his prison.

Adrian is a restorer. His job is to strip away what doesn’t belong and reveal what was always underneath. The more he uncovers, the more he should fear Edmund, but he can’t bring himself to hate the monster who’s only shown him softness.

Freeing Edmund means defying the last guardian, confronting a past steeped in violence, and trusting a starving vampire with the one thing Adrian swore he’d never risk again: his heart.

The Vampire of Mullwood House is a spicy MM paranormal romance and the latest instalment in the Ashford After Dark series. Each book can be read as a standalone.

For readers who enjoy: A touch-starved ancient vampire, Forced proximity in a gothic manor, “The monster chose me” trope, and a guaranteed HEA.

Review –

This is my favorite in the series by far. It’s darker than the first two. It describes the realities of what Edmund, a vampire, did to survive centuries before. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty. He killed a lot of people, even wiping out towns, not caring if it was women or children, or if the residents were good or bad. He was described as the type of bad vampire that rivaled those in horror movies. He was not a good man, er, vampire.

In the here and now Edmund is a totally different vampire than the one who killed indiscriminately centuries before. He’s basically being held captive in a huge manor on an island not far from Ashford, where the series is set. Note that Ashford is mentioned, but the entirety of The Vampire of Mullwood House was set on the island mentioned above and in the blurb.

Adrian is an art restorer. He’s been commissioned to restore a painting of an ancestor who once lived in the manor. He does it for the money, but he also does it to get away from a controlling ex. The entire time he’s doing the restoration he only sees one person outside of those on the ferry that brought him to the island, Clara. Clara is a housekeeper slash guardian of the manor.

The job is complete, and Adrian packs up and heads to the ferry, telling Clara he’ll be back the next day for his art supplies. The problem? There’s a major storm – something that’s very common in these books – that prevents the ferry from running. He returns to the manor to stay for the night, but Clara isn’t quite as welcoming as she’d been before. For the first time, Adrian hears another voice, that of a man, who tells Clara to open the door and allow Adrian in. This is when Adrian meets Edmund Wren, the lord of the manor, so to speak, for the first time.

To say Adrian is blown away by Edmund is an understatement. He looks just like the man in the painting. Well, he is the man in the painting, but Adrian doesn’t know that yet. Things happen lightning fast after that first meeting. After Clara escorts Adrian to a bedroom – not the one he’d been staying in before – Edmund brings him dry clothes while he’s in the shower. Adrian, not willing to pass up a good opportunity, invites Edmund into the shower with him, though Edmund disappears before he is able to finish what they started. Adrian does, but not Edmund.

I did say lightning fast. 😉

The next day Edmund asks Adrian to stay because the restoration isn’t complete, though Adrian is positive it is. This is when he finds out who Edmund is, and why Edmund’s unable to leave the manor at all. Clara isn’t happy, for reasons mentioned in the book. Clara is not just a housekeeper. Her position on the island is something totally different. She does everything she can to prevent any more work being done on the painting, but Edmund and Adrian find a way to get it done anyway. The outcome is everything Edmund could hope for, and everything Clara has feared for years.

I liked Edmund and Adrian together, though I do think certain things happened way too fast. I get there are blood bonds, etc., but everything between both men literally happened in 2 days, I think?

“You’re good with your tongue for someone who was born when showing an ankle was risqué,” I pant.

They were playing around within minutes of meeting the first time, then having sex and Adrian allowing Edmund to take his blood the next day, to them declaring their forever love to each other. I get it with Edmund, but Adrian is human, and had just gotten out of a bad relationship.

Even so, I really enjoyed this, though I ended it wondering who had originally hired Adrian to restore the painting. I don’t think the answer to that was anywhere in the book.

A really good story.

You can find my reviews of the first 2 books at the following links, Blood Work and The Graveyard Shift. Note that none of the books appear to be linked by anything other than the town of Ashford, and one secondary character from Blood Work being mentioned once in The Graveyard Shift.

Another thing is that there are quite a few editing issues in this book. I saw a couple here and there in the first two, but they’re more glaring in this one. They weren’t enough to pull me from the story too much, but they were there.

4.5 stars.