Love Hurts: The Killing of Rose by Holly Hood

Love Hurts: The Killing of Rose by Holly Hood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Love Hurts is the story of Sam and Frankie, brothers who happen to be incubus. In the traditional role of the incubus, their purpose in life is to find women to have sex with and feed off of their essence…and then kill them. When Sam falls in love, he tries to fight his true nature so he can be with the woman he loves.

I'm really not sure if we are supposed to like Sam and Frankie, since they're the bad guys in this book, but I loved everything about them. I felt both characters were written well. Sam feels like he is a monster for what he does, and it is easy to feel sorry for him. He hates Frankie's carefree attitude, but Frankie just wants to have fun. I loved the dynamics of their relationship, and although Frankie seemed completely carefree, I think he was caught off guard by Dylan and maybe even had feelings for her, although he doesn't want to admit it. I really liked Dylan's character and hope we get to see more of her and Frankie's relationship in the next book.

As for Rose and Delaney, I found them harder to connect with, and as such, I didn't really like their characters much. Since Rose is the title character, I expected her to play a larger role in the story. I would have loved to know more about her, maybe have some background information written in for her. I was left with so many questions about her that I was a bit disappointed by the end of the book. I wanted to know why she did what she did, i.e., not telling about Sam, why she didn't like change, settling for a mundane life she was not happy in. I started out liking Delaney, but by the end of the book I had changed my mind about her. Again more information would have been helpful, such as why she forgave Sam went back to him. I assume it's because he is an incubus and females are just automatically attracted to him, but we're never told. It could be that she's just a stupid female character, and that's what I left with at the end of the book.

As for the plot and the book in general, I really loved the story. I thought it was well thought out and well written. The version of the book that I read was in bad need of editing, mostly grammatical errors, but I'm assuming that will be fixed in the next edition, and if you are able to overlook that, this is definitely a story you want to read. It's not really your typical happily ever after love story, which was a nice change. I will most definitely be looking forward to the next book in the series, especially after the way we were left hanging at the end!


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