Rating: 4.75 stars
Buy Links:  Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel

Buy this book! Is that good enough? Can I just end this review and trust you’ll follow my advice? Okay, because I care about you all so much, I’m going to tell you why you should run, not walk, to your nearest. . .computer. (It probably doesn’t involve a lot of running, let’s be honest.)

Intercession is the story of a vampire, an angel, and a human. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? The angel, the vampire, and the human walked into a bar. . . Unless it ends in a smoking hot threesome, though, it’s probably not any joke you’ve heard. The vampire, David Derringer, was brutally attacked and turned years ago, and has since been searching for his little brother, whom he promised his mother he would find right before she died. David, obviously, is unlike any vampire you’ve read about before and most definitely different than the vampires that exist within the world of this book. There’s a spark of humanity within him. He’s not a mindless monster driven by bloodlust. He kills to eat and survive, but he also is able to control his urges somewhat and still has a desire to do the right thing, when most vampires are missing any sense of morality. And, oh yah, he’s also the most most bad-ass vampire in the west.

David has a reputation for being elusive. He’s been on the run since he escaped the coven of vampires that attacked him, and has managed to escape the monks who have been hunting him down ever since. Monks are vampire hunters, essentially, who have made it their mission to do “God’s work” and kill all the vampires they can. One day, David makes his way into a church (not the best way to avoid monks), and says a prayer, that he’ll be able to find his brother. God hears his prayer and sends him a guardian angel, Jophiel, to help him in his quest. Doesn’t make sense, right? Vampires are damned and God wants to help him? Believe me, all parties involved are downright confused. But regardless, David now has an angel as his constant companion. A very good-looking angel, mind you.

When David drops Jophiel back at the hotel one night to go on the hunt for food, he picks up Arthur for an extremely hot night, but he cannot find it within himself to kill him. Arthur is confused by this as well, since he knew David was a vampire and was counting on him to fulfill his deathwish. Instead, Arthur proves to be valuable to David and Jophiel in their search for David’s little brother, Danny. They become the unlikeliest of trios on a pursuit for the brother, but also trying to avoid the many factions who want them all dead.

The premise of this book is fantastically original. And while none of these supernatural beings are new in and of themselves, the combination of their relationship and the world Espinoza has created was like a breath of fresh air within the midst of the same-old same-old we often get within the genre. More importantly, the characters themselves are addictive. If Espinoza doesn’t give us a sequel to this book, I may just die. That’s how much I fell in love with these flawed, complex characters. From the very beginning, we see that David has a caustic sense of humor and Jophiel’s angelic innocence is such a funny foil. And while it would be so easy to fall into the stereotypical roles of bad-boy, imperfect human, and, well, angel, none of these characters fit square into any category. Jophiel, oh sweet, sexy Jophiel, may just turn out to be the biggest bad boy of them all, though he always retains his heavenly power.

If you’ve gotten a look at the cover, which is such a good one, you’ll see three men who are inevitably going to fall into bed together. So, if you don’t do menage, I will sadly tell you to not read this book. But this is such a good menage. I’ve mentioned many times how difficult it is to create a believable chemistry between three characters and, good heavens, Espinoza does it skillfully in this book. There’s no third wheel here. In fact, it saddens me to think of any two of them together without the other. I just have to share this part from the book, right after the three have come together and their monk attackers have interrupted the act, which also demonstrates David’s sense of humor I loved so much:

“I knew there was something evil going on here, but I never dreamed of such depravity.” David’s lips twitched. “Really? This looks like terrible depravity to you? You need to get out of the monastery once in a while. What we were doing is practically the missionary position of gay threesomes.”

I’m not usually a big fan of books with supernatural elements, and the fact that Espinoza doesn’t take things too seriously kept me a very involved, happy reader. However, on the flip side, I do think it was the book’s one minor deficiency. Because the world didn’t seem overly developed, there wasn’t a lot of complicated explanations. We’re dealing with the vampire world, heaven, and earth as well. Had she gone too in depth, we would’ve needed an appendix. However, because there wasn’t an explanation of the complicated background, we were asked to accept some kind of convenient, confusing things that happen within the story. God’s role in this, for one, was maybe a bit too flexible. It worked well with the plot, but not so much with the credibility.

I highly recommend this story. It had everything I ask for in a book: clever writing, hot sex scenes, and characters you grow to love. I think, due to the huge cliffhanger at the end, that this is the beginning of a series, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I’m ready for more of my new vampire crush, David. . .and angel crush, Jophiel. . .and human crush Arthur (okay, I adore them all), to continue to kick some supernatural ass.