A spaceship is not normally where I would think to find a vampire.

As Break Out opens, our hero, Ricardo Sanchez, vampire, is running for his life from religious zealots. Of course, this wouldn’t be particularly unusual for a vampire in a paranormal romance, but the reader quickly finds out that Rico is actually the owner-pilot of the spaceship El Cazador de la Sangre, or “Blood Hunter”, a fitting name for a vampire’s ship. His hired captain Tannis and shipmate Daisy are genetically modified humans (Tannis is part snake/reptile, Daisy part, well, daisy), and his medical officer and engineer have shady pasts neither is willing to speak of. Oh, and Rico is known for his playboy ways – the only way to really control the bloodlust, of course!

Enter Skylar Rossaria, attempting to go undercover among this motley crew to break someone out of prison. Of course, they see through her ruse fairly early on, but the woman has layers, and manages to keep her origins secret from most of the group. But keeping herself from Rico proves to be the harder task, as his every action is intent on getting her into his bed.

The set-up is so space opera it’s almost comical, and honestly, did remind me to a certain extent of Joss Whedon’s sadly cancelled TV show Firefly, which is definitely a compliment. Each character has a history, and we get just enough to make us care about them, but not so much that it gets bogged down in the details. The next books in the series actually star some of them, so that’s pretty fun. Everyone seems to have an actual purpose, rather than just filling in as window dressing. Plus, the technology was pretty cool all around.

Skylar was occasionally frustrating, with her insistence on keeping everything a secret. It makes sense, but I kept wanting to beat her around the head with the book until she just told them already. We already know how deception generally plays out – not well for the deceiver. I was also a little annoyed with her basically being “the most perfectly beautiful woman, but she doesn’t care about things like that. I mean, she can’t even walk in heels!” like that somehow negates how gorgeous she is. I have no problem with her being lovely, I just don’t like how it’s downplayed. But that might just be me.

I was amused as heck with Rico, though – you have a 2,000-year-old vampire (born 1452) who has, over the years, survived the fleeing of Earth, gotten pretty rich, is an excellent pilot, and substitutes sex for bloodlust. He’s smart and sexy and I loved it. And the chemistry between Rico and Skylar? Very nice.

The copy of Break Out I received was actually a reprint – the original was published in 2011, but the new version includes some fun bonus scenes. We get a game of truth or dare from the crew, as well as an extra post-epilogue sexytime shot. While fun, I’m not sure they added a whole lot extra to the story, so if you’ve read the original edition, I wouldn’t feel the need to go searching for this one.

The main reason this gets a B+ and not an A is because I just found it so predictable. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I knew Skylar’s secret before the end of our first chapter with her, and kinda knew how things were going to go for the group before they decided on their plan. We also have some pretty alpha-trope-y actions from Rico (“let’s get her juuuuust drunk enough that she wants to have sex. But not too drunk that it’s rape. Because that would be wrong.”) that can be a little grating, but it was pretty easy to get over. It’s still fun, right up my alley really, and I will definitely be reading it again.

Also, I may have already bought the next three books in the series to read, once I’ve caught up a bit more with my current TBR pile. Maybe. Kinda. Oh well, my book budget was basically ruined anyways.