Can you tell that I can’t ever get enough of K. Webster? Trust me, it’s totally true. If she writes a book, I’m going to read the fuck out of it. It’s turning that way with Ker Dukey too. I don’t have as many of her books as I do of K’s, but I’m getting there. This is one of the reasons I love having a Kindle. I can carry so many gazillions of books all in one place. Can you imagine what my house would look like if I had paper copies of all the books I read? Thank goodness for ebooks and the library. That’s all I have to say on that. And that has nothing to do with Vlad, so let’s talk about this lovely book.
Vlad takes place in the Pretty Dolls world, but it is a standalone. Fans of the Pretty Dolls may recognize the name Vik, but he isn’t in this one at all. This is the story of Vlad Vasiliev, oldest son of the Vasiliev family, one of the First Families of Russian crime and host of the V Games. The V Games are not anything like the X Games. They are a brutal set of games where people go in and either kill or be killed, basically.
The First Families are the Vasilievs, the Vetrovs, the Volkovs, and the Voskoboynikovs. They each have their things that they do, legal and otherwise. They also all intermarry to build alliances and strengthen their families. It’s expected and no one, especially women, should expect to actually be able to fall in love and marry the person that they choose. Everyone is brought up to know their duty and they are expected to follow it. Vlad has mostly taken over the running of his family, even though his father is still alive.
Vlad knows that it’s time to marry. He asks Diana Volkov to marry him. Her father had no sons, just her and her younger sister, Irina, AKA Shadow. Diana and Irina have been groomed to take over the family business and are very good at it. Part of Diana’s concessions to their marriage is that Irina has to come with her and that Vlad has to guarantee that she won’t have to marry anyone she doesn’t want to. Vlad is more than fine with that.
Irina tends to stay in the background. Her sister is the bright light, and she’s in her shadow. She’s known Vlad all her life since their families are all close. She’s also loved him from afar for many years. She has always kind of known that she couldn’t have anything to do with him, but when he becomes engaged to her sister, she knows that she really can’t have anything to do with him, no matter what. And living in his house? That is going to be sure hell.
Vlad is so controlled, but there is one thing that is guaranteed to get under his skin, and that’s Irina. He knows he can’t have her, but he’s not about to let anyone else have her.
It’s that time again. You get to go your way, I am going to go mine. You can follow me if you would like. I love when Ker and K get together. They both create some dark and twisted worlds, but when they get together, they push each other further so the stories just get that much better. There’s a lot happening in this book. There’s the main plot, and then some smaller side stories that I’m hoping will get carried into later books. I love plots and machinations. We get the set up for the next book, as well. I’m looking forward to seeing how that’s going to play out because I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty explosive. Maybe even literally. When we get Ven, we’ll find out, I guess. I just hope I can hold out that long.
I did figure out who the one person was playing around with before the reveal of that. I didn’t know that that particular person had done the things in the past that they did. That was fucking creepy, and they deserved any consequences that may have come their way.
I hate Vika. There, I’ve said it. Totally hate her. She’s nasty. I can’t wait to see what is going to happen to her because I’m sure something is. She will totally deserve it. I hope it’s something really, really nasty.
Nothing had ever happen to Vlad and Irina. I love both of them. They are supercool.
OK, that’s all for this one. It’s on KU, so there is no excuse to not going over to Zon and picking it up. Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 