Karen Chance’s Touch of Dark, Book 1 in the Cassandra Palmer series starts out well — Cassie is a clairvoyant who has been on the run for 6 months from her vampire gangster foster father because she turned him in to the F.B.I. after learning he was misusing her abilities, and was responsible for the death of the parents that she never had a chance to know. Unfortunately, the potential appears to have gone unrealized. This book contains adult scenes which are discussed after the jump. Unfortunately, the author puts in unnecessary and illogical graphic sex scenes and tries to justify them with explanations that would be better suited to a cheap pornographic movie. I am not prudish, but what bothers me about the sex scenes is that they are out of character (in more ways than one) and seem to come out of nowhere. They do not make sense. This sort of sensationalism unfortunately reminds me of another author of vampire fiction: Laurell K. Hamilton. If you enjoy Ms. Hamilton’s work then you might enjoy this, but otherwise I just do not want to recommend it.

I continued reading and finished the 2nd book of the series: Claimed by Shadow and it had the exact same problems as the first book. I was very disappointed because I really felt as though the premise had potential – yes, there have been books (and movies) with gangster vampires before but it is a very intriguing topic and I am sure that the depths have yet to be plumbed.