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A Hearts On Fire Review

TWO & A HALF HEARTS--College professor Nishon "Nimo" Moore 's 3 year old son, Isaiah "Zay" Moore hurts himself and is brought to the local hospital in Mississippi. There he meets Dr. Dakota Sevion, a vampire and also his mate. Nimo has hang ups about being disowned from his family but he has his baby Zay and his flock of friends to lean on. Dr. Dakota has his gang of Mack truck sized gay brothers (all 10 of them) that are doctors or somehow involved with the town's hospital to help pass the time. While wading through the sea of characters, the mates fall in love and try to battle an evil presence that has an eye of the super special Zay. His talent can be discovered in "Dakota".

I like the idea of this story, a single father who finds out he's a mate of a vampire. The simple plot of just that without the added extra is fun to read about.

However, this story is over saturated with too of everything to fully enjoy the plot of a human/vampire relationship.

The issues:

- Too many characters. Unless a family tree or character list is included in the next book from this series, it's too much to keep a track of. Everyone's having a bushel of babies! Dakota has 10 brothers...who are all gay including Dakota (suspend your reality with me) and 3 sisters. All of the Sevion brothers are named after states...and everyone of the brothers are described from looks, to secret talents, to their jobs, wants, etc.

Do you see the issue? About half of this story is unnecessary descriptions of secondary characters. And Nimo has a gaggle of friends that I stopped counting after #3 because his community of friends, students, acquaintances had a herd of children (some with cutesy names) to also keep track of.

It was like reading the Duggars: Light Paranormal style. Too many characters. Not enough paranormal aspect given.

- Cutesy kid - Isaiah is 3 years old going on 30. The switching from cutesy speak to an advanced vocabulary and the continuous flip flop was distracting. "Vampyiuh"? Then he comes out with adult logic in the next sentence? I'm not even going to touch the flip flopping of adult characters trying to not swear around "Zay" and then say f@ck around him etc in the next sentence. Or the matching outfits? Really? Matching outfits and the long descriptions of said outfits and accessories?

- Which leads me to me other issue - the many, many descriptions of everything from the school of characters, clothing and hair, rooms and other objects is so heavy. This story is too indulgent on the unnecessary items. About half of the story is on things or people other than the main characters. It could have been edited out

- Which also brings up the need for editing - a lot of the long points were repeated or the characters forget they said the exact point in earlier parts of the book. Another issue is the dialogue, sometimes the characters were long winded, you'd need a second pair of lungs to talk that much in one sentence. Parts read unnatural for a person to say. An example the "Gwandma" is using a Romanian term of endearment, why would she explain in her dialogue what she just said to her son in English? Who is she explaining it to? The reader or her son who is fluent?

- There's telling instead of showing. And so much emphasis was put in the materialistic aspect (everyone's extremely rich, yo' - millions are farted out like gas) of the story the paranormal part got buried. I forgot Dakota was a vampire with how human he acted if it wasn't for a fang mentioned here or there. The minor country that is the Sevion brothers are easily mated with Nimo's stable of beautiful gay friends whom I assume will star in 10 more books of this series? *gulps*

And the story after 70%? It went from steady decline into the brick wall. Even reading about the couple started to make me cringe. So much unbelievable plot twists, the dramatics, hysterics, choppy flashbacks...*smh*

I wanted to love this story. I truly did.

But under all of the soap opera issues, the trickle of Nimo and Dakota before they mated was the best part, and the story's saving grace. I'd probably read the next book. But it's a one way pass for me, if book #2 continues the same problems from book #1, I'm out and over this series.