Blood Orange book review

From New York Times bestselling author Karina Halle comes a dark and delicious Dracula retelling filled with secrets and lies, dangerous liaisons and a forbidden, student-teacher, second chance love story with a twist.
"My heart will always find yours."
Dahlia Abernathy has only known revenge. When her parents were killed at an early age by vampires, Dahlia spent the rest of her life under the thumb of the Witch's Guild being trained to kill them. Her latest mission sends her undercover to a prestigious music academy in Venice, Italy. Her goal? To kill Professor Valtu Aminoff, her teacher and the notorious vampire who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula.
But getting close to a dangerous vampire like Professor Aminoff is one thing. Falling for him is another. With Dahlia's appearance disguised under a glamor spell, Valtu has no idea that the woman who has become his new dark obsession is actually the reincarnation of the woman he loved and lost twice before.
And Dahlia doesn't remember that the very man she has been sent to kill is the love of her life.
Will their love come through and transcend time once again? Or are the fated lovers destined to let history repeat itself?
Blood Orange is a modern-day Dracula retelling about the "real-life" Dracula that inspired Bram Stoker. This is a dark vampire romance with plenty of content warnings (please check interior of book for extensive list as it is +++++spicy) and while it is a spinoff of The Dark Eyes Duet, you do not need to read any other books before Blood Orange.

TikTok is really hitting it out of the park for me this year. I have had so many wins and this month alone I’ve had two! I will say Blood Orange is not for the faint hearted, the trigger warnings are there for a reason and please read them before you dive into this one. Shit gets dark very quickly and the spice in this one is definitely rough, so if you’re not into that, then please give this one a miss.

Blood Orange follows Dahlia, vampire slayer in Venice with one mission, to kill the one they call Dracula. But when things go past the point of professionalism and the feelings start to crop up Dahlia is left wondering why it is she loves the monster she’s been raised to hate?

When I say this book is spicy, I don’t think this truly sums up what this book is. There are certain scenes in this book that took my breath away and pushed the limits of everything I thought could be published in a book. If you imagine Fifty Shades with vampires (probably how the original fanfic was written) but x 100 then we would be getting close. But what I will say even though there was a lot of spice, the plot didn’t suffer too much. I still enjoyed learning about the characters and the world they lived in and the interior politics that comes with having Vamps living with humans.

The characters were a tad annoying, Dahlia I think forgets her purpose quite a lot and despite the fact that Valtu (Dracula) is a stunning specimen of a man there wasn’t really any other reason. I wasn’t sure why she had to throw herself at him to kill him when there were plenty of other opportunities to just off him at the school. It was a little manufactured in the end and although the ending surprised me, definitely thought this was a standalone, it all just felt a little rushed. I would have loved for more time to see them take on the world together, and maybe that’s what the second book will be, who knows.

But beside that this book has a really interesting politics system when it comes to the vampires themselves, the mythology isn’t the normal you get bitten and turn into a vampire. I do wonder whether the book this is a spin off to goes into more detail about the King and his function within the society as a whole. I will probably end up picking those books up as well.

If you’re into Dark Romance and love a good bitey vampire book then run, go pick this one up. It is currently on KU so if you have a membership it won’t cost you anything extra to read. I will definitely be picking the next book up in the series. I cannot wait.