Review: Night Owls by Lauren M. Roy (Night Owls #1)

Night Owls (Night Owls #1)
Lauren M. Roy
Published: Feb. 25, 2014 (Ace)
Purchase: Book Depository or Amazon
Review source: copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

Reviewed by: Amy

Rating (out of 5): 3.5 stars

Elly has been fighting the Creeps, or Jackals, for as long as she can remember and now she’s on the run from them. They’re after a book she stole with her now-deceased mentor, and she has nowhere else to turn except to a former colleague of her mentor’s, hoping he can keep the book safe.

The book then trades hands again, ending up with Valerie, a vampire and owner of Night Owl’s bookstore, for safekeeping. Valerie enjoys the quiet life she’s carved out for herself in Edgewood. Little does she know the trouble the book has already caused, but when more people wind up dead, she has to face her past in order to survive what’s coming.

Night Owls starts out with Elly and Val’s storylines running parallel with the insinuation that eventually they will meet up over the common ground concerning the book and the Creeps. During this time, I found myself more drawn to Val’s story than Elly’s. Val, being a vampire, definitely has a past and we are only given glimpses and mentions of what life was like for her before moving to Edgewood. Val right away was painted as a more dynamic character than Elly, and until they meet up, it’s Val’s storyline that propels the story forward.

In traditional vampire fashion, Val has a Renfield by the name of Chaz. Night Owls is told from Elly, Val, or Chaz’ points of view and I especially liked the relationship between Chaz and Val. It wasn’t a typical vampire/Renfield relationship and even by the end we’ve only loosely learned what being a Renfield entails in Lauren M. Roy’s world. Chaz is clearly in love with Val, but we don’t yet know how deep her feelings run for him or if she’s even aware of his feelings for her. Like many other things about Val, there’s a lot she keeps close to the chest.

Elly, on the other hand, took me awhile to warm up to. The first picture we have of her is the opening scene with her running from the Creeps. The early incarnation of Elly in the book, which to me painted her as more childlike and almost afraid, wars with the later Elly (toward the middle or end) where she becomes much more authoritative. I understand that characters can change throughout the course of the story but here it just felt very disconnected. I would much rather have the kick-ass authoritative Elly throughout the entire book.

Roy packs a lot into this first book and much of it is setting up for further stories. There’s the conflict involving the book, but even that cools down towards the end. Regardless, Night Owls is a pretty interesting, and slightly different, take on the supernatural. Couple that with the complicated relationships introduced, as well as the story threads started here, and I’m more than willing to read more in this series.

Sexual content: references to sex