Realm of Shadows by Shannon Drake

Realm of Shadows
(Vampire Saga Book #4)
by Shannon Drake (aka Heather Graham)

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Every Nightmare Has Its Beginning

In an ancient churchyard just outside Paris, archeologists uncover an ancient tomb certain they have stumbled onto the find of the century. But something goes very wrong as the tomb is opened. Something too frightening to imagine...and too terrible to utter.
For American visitor Tara Mason, the romantic city of her dreams has suddenly turned sinister. For she has heard the blood-curdling screams in the churchyard and knows that she must run away--from the powerful stranger chasing after her...and from a nightmare she can't be sure is real or imagined.
At the country estate where she has sought refuge, the shadowy man reappears. He calls himself a guardian, sworn to protect the innocent from an evil most never see. And Tara will have to trust him, because that evil has seen her...and won't stop until it claims her. body and soul.

Tara is moving to France for a bit to take care of her ailing Grandpapa, Jacques DeVant, with her cousin, Ann. Yet, on the first day, her Grandpapa talks her into investigating an archeological dig going on within a local church in the village. Her visit turns out tragically when what is inside the discovered coffin of Louisa de Montcrasset disappears and one of the diggers ends up brutally murdered. Now Tara must, begrudgingly, keep her visit to the dig secret from the police but also the public due to the tough advice from a mysterious friend of her Grandpapa, Brent Malone. He's dark, insanely handsome, oddly knows more about all the strange activity going on in the village around Tara's family chateau than anyone else and she cannot stop her attraction to him upon his ever visit. Can Tara accept the truth of what exactly is causing these shadows to emerge throughout her Grandpapa's village while believing in this mythical "Alliance" that began during WWII?

I had high hopes for this book since the back description sounded intriguing, but sadly it lagged to much and I couldn't finish it in full (not just yet!) I got bored quite easy while reading this and had to skip on to something new to spice up my reading habit before I got into a lull. I did get to page 296 out of a 414 page story, so not too shabby. The story wasn't too bad, but it did skip around to a lot of places with too many new characters brought up too infrequently that it made the story flow unsmoothly and just felt choppy overall.

The relationship between Tara & Brent wasn't anything special as well. I didn't feel sparks between them and had hoped their romantic scenes would have added some spice to the story, but nope! Usually Heather Graham's (aka Shannon Drake's) stories don't have too much heat going on in the bedroom department, but this one seemed to lack even less (except for the murdering parts). Plus, I'm not a fan of books involving Police characters (or any other correctional institutional figures) so Inspector Javet didn't really fascinate me at all and he actually took away some of my interest from the tale during his crude interactions with Tara or Brent.

Likes: The historical flashbacks to WWII were interesting!

Dislikes: It just felt like parts of the story were dragged out way past what they were meant to be and that turned me off.

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