Though not my favorite book in the old Silhouette Shadows line, Amanda Stevens’ The Perfect Kiss was a fun read. I also like that it’s a standalone. Unlike many of the current crop of paranormals, the Shadows line had mostly standalone books and featured many different kinds of paranormal plots ranging from ghost stories to gothics to the more-familiar werewolves and vampires.

This story is a vampire tale with a bit of a gothic feel to it. The story opens as a popular young model, Anya Valorian, gets seduced and then turned by an evil vampire. Now fast forward ten years later. Anya lives in seclusion, and the hero, Zach Christopher, seeks her out to be the face of the advertising campaign he believes will rescue his family’s floundering cosmetics empire.

As I read, I found myself wavering between irritation and enjoyment. On the one hand, Zach pursues Anya pretty aggressively and I found him incredibly insensitive to her and overbearing on occasion. He comes off as cocky as he assures Anya that he just knows she will come around. In addition, while the story has a gothic feel, the narration does get laid on a bit thick at times. Oh, and since it was written in the early nineties, some of the fashion descriptions (Anya is a model, after all) will probably make readers snicker a bit. I certainly did.

However, Anya’s struggle feels poignant and real at times. She has no illusions about what she is and what vampires do, and yet she fights it. And as the story wound along, I found myself caught up in the drama and wondering if Zach and Anya would somehow find a way to beat the odds and end up together. If I hadn’t spend so much time wondering if Zach would also find a way to overcome his personality, I probably would rate this higher, but as it is, I’d still give it a B-.