Vampire Addiction: The Vampires of Athens (Pohler)

Vampire Addiction: The Vampires of Athens, by Eva Pohler (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This popped up as a free ebook in a mailing list along with The Crime Beat. Yes, this was going to be a teenage paranormal romance. I downloaded it anyway. It was pretty much what I expected and not much more.

Book 1 of a series, this one takes place in Athens, Greece and ties vampires into Greek mythology, dating them back to Dionysus, who first created them. Killing a vampire means destroying all the vampires they've created (unless they're still young enough to be healthy living adults). If you kill one of the first generation of vampires, that would be really bad.

Gertie is sent there from her mansion in NYC to spend a year aboard at a school in Athens. She believes her parents don't love her, or just don't know how to be parents. She ends up with a big family in two-bedroom apartment. She thinks she's going to hate it, but of course she finds the family she never had.

Gertie meets a boy named Jeno on the bus there who sees her interest in vampires from the books she's reading. Of course, he's a vampire. In fact, he's a very old vampire even if he looks like a teen.

The family (Baba, Mama, Nikita, Klaus and Phoebe) tries to shield Gertie the presence of vampires in Athens, except that they're all over the place, so it would seem impossible to hide, particularly at night. Oh, Phoebe doesn't actually talk, every since the fire that killed the youngest boy Damien.

Hector is a friend of the family and drives everyone to school. He also has a bit of a background. Nikita likes Hector, but Hector likes Gertie. Gertie "likes" Hector but really likes Jeno. This part was just too typical for me.

Gertie sees Jeno as a person more than a vampire. Yet despite all her promises to Mama, she allows Jeno to bite her a bunch of times. Each bite gives the victim the powers of a vampire for several hours while the virus is in their system. Powers include flight, invisibility (but not your clothes), illusion (so you can make clothes appear), x-ray vision, mind-reading (and message sending), persuasion and stupefying. But, of course, it is addiciting.

Gertie is somewhat naive when it comes to using these powers, and if Jeno was actually interested in Gertie herself (and not feeding on her blood), he would explain why her hare-brained schemes wouldn't work. On the other hand, he could be manipulating her the entire time. Or someone could have been manipulating Jeno the entire time (or most of it).

Actually, this brings up a little confusing point. Gertie is kidnapped by two vampires and dropped into the labyrinth in Crete (where she's found by the Minotaur). She's supposed to be a hostage to exchange for Jeno's father, but she gets away and returns to Athens just in time to be an important pawn that needs to be manipulated for their plans to be achieved. So why dump her so far away when it isn't obvious that she'd make it back?

As far as the series goes, nothing is resolved in book 1. All the story lines brought up toward the latter half of the book are left open for the next book (or beyond?). The vamps are going to take over Athens and send humans to live in caves, or something like that. Quick reading, but I'm not planning on reading any more of these, even if they're free.

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