What do you think?
Rate this book
The Vampire Defense Agency #4
Day Break
Rhys isn’t surprised when Kyr wants to recruit a new fighter for the overworked team. And, nope, he’s not even surprised when the very male Kyr wants on the Hush’s roster is the one Rhys can’t stand being around.
Rhys tells himself he doesn’t like Wes because of his upper-class roots, but that’s a lie. The truth is … complicated. That complicated truth, however, is exactly what Rhys is gonna have to deal with—because he and Wes are about to find themselves working quite intimately.
It all starts when Queen Amarada finds herself threatened by an unknown faction. She turns to the Hush, demanding the presence of two of its members (yep, guess who) at royal functions. Of course … this is Amarada we’re talking about here, so, yeah, there’s more to it.
And that unknown faction? It has some very nasty plans—and they’re not the only ones. A demon lord is hunting the Hush, and the streets are about to get a lot more dangerous.
But those battles aren’t the only that Rhys and Wes will have fight. As their assignment throws them into a conflict that bridges a dark past and a dangerous present, these two males have a lot to wrestle with—but they just may find that some demons are best fought together.
Rhys tells himself he doesn’t like Wes because of his upper-class roots, but that’s a lie. The truth is … complicated. That complicated truth, however, is exactly what Rhys is gonna have to deal with—because he and Wes are about to find themselves working quite intimately.
It all starts when Queen Amarada finds herself threatened by an unknown faction. She turns to the Hush, demanding the presence of two of its members (yep, guess who) at royal functions. Of course … this is Amarada we’re talking about here, so, yeah, there’s more to it.
And that unknown faction? It has some very nasty plans—and they’re not the only ones. A demon lord is hunting the Hush, and the streets are about to get a lot more dangerous.
But those battles aren’t the only that Rhys and Wes will have fight. As their assignment throws them into a conflict that bridges a dark past and a dangerous present, these two males have a lot to wrestle with—but they just may find that some demons are best fought together.
339 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 30, 2023
86 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Diane
9 books168 followersKatherine Diane loves intense, complex heroes and fascinating worlds. She likes her romances a little dark, a little raw, and suffused with erotic realism.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 1, 2024
I decided to try this because I had fun with Silk & Sand, barring the part of its last volume where Diane ran out of room and had to cram everything in and answer questions previously raised. This book was written in 2023, S&S came out 2024, so this was a predecessor.
You can kind of see a thread between S&S’ Seth and Raider and this book’s Wes and Rhys. They’re not copy-paste similar, but you can see some similarities, particularly in how Raider and Rhys both have tortured and abused pasts while Wes and Seth have dark violent ones. There is also a thread wherein the plot takes forever to manifest and then suddenly everything comes to a head at around 89% of the book and then we have to have climax and denouement in the remaining 11%. Yikes. That is not enough book for that much development.
So I did not enjoy this book, or Wes, or Rhys, or the relationship between Wes and Rhys. It took forever for there to be any kind of revelation between them, and unlike S&S where Seth and Raider at least improved their relationship through sexy times (being able to ~open up to each other, EMOTIONALLY & METAPHORICALLY U GUYS, GET UR HEADS OUT OF THE GUTTER), Wes and Rhys both just fuck without actually improving their relationship. And what do you know, once they started telling each other about themselves, they actually got to trusting each other. What a newfangled concept.
It’s also because of this that I feel annoyance instead of sympathy or empathy for Rhys. He has gone through abuse, and I get that because he hasn’t been able to deal with his past he just runs away from his problems and is apparently in the “walk it off” school of thought. But it’s because of his decisions to not deal with them so that he won’t viciously freak out that he puts people other than himself in hurt or danger. And I feel like this wasn’t pointed out to him enough, that through his inaction, he is a danger not just to himself, but to others.
In one scene, Rhys is freaking out to the point where his “commander”, Kyr, feels he has no choice but to physically subdue and then sedate Rhys. They both apologize for it later, but by that point, I am over both of them. Kyr for using force on Rhys, and Rhys for letting it get to the point where people who care for him have to use force on him because they’re afraid he might physically hurt himself. They put each other in such shitty situations. Get therapy, nerd. Killing demons does not count as therapy. Rhys and Kyr are supposedly seriously good fighters. What if Rhys had lashed out and the situation had escalated?
Rhys also keeps flipping out on Wes, and the only thing that could possibly be holding this together is the fact that Wes believes that Rhys is his mate. Wes constantly apologizes to Rhys for his outbursts, and Rhys apologizes for making Wes have outbursts — but the thing is I think if Rhys controlled how Wes got the information, or if the info came from Rhys, then maybe we (I) wouldn’t be in this position (of being annoyed with Rhys).
Also, because we are so caught up in Rhys’ drama, Wes gets the short shrift. He is just there to provide support for Rhys, which feels so unfair. I almost wish Rhys had dealt with a majority of his drama elsewhere, because people are always rushing to comfort and defend and praise Rhys: so we know about his fighting prowess, ability to ghost, so on. But what about Wes? Other than his initial fight scene, I didn’t know more about his strengths.
Can he stand on an even footing with Rhys? Or with any of the other Hush members? Does he have anything to offer other than his contained violence and his ability to stalk and subdue vampires and demons, as long as they’re not part of Hush? That said I haven’t read any of the other books so maybe this is Diane’s style, where one half of the couple is called “powerful” and we leave it at that. But frankly, Wes doesn’t seem all that competent.
Add to that, the story also takes forever to take shape, and then suddenly everything is chaos in the end. There are only two things to know from this book:
1. The vampire queen Amarada suspects that the Brotherhood of Limp Dicks wants to depose her in league with demons as they believe vampires are ~descended from demons. They want to resurrect(?) an age-old vampire, Kadaros.
2. Kadaros’ body (he was born from a vampire-demon union) was stored under the castle, and had been for quite some time (centuries?) — and this body is not dead. It is also, however, not alive. A Schroedinger’s vampire, if you will.
But this book takes forever to let you know these two very measly pieces of information. And by the way, neither of them are resolved, likely because you have to read the next volume, which will probably feature Ronan.
And lastly — Diane insists on using “male” and “female” instead of “man” or “woman”, or, hell, even just the gender-neutral “person”, to the point that it becomes really fucking awkward. It doesn’t flow as naturally, and it came to the point that it would throw me off.
Here are some samples: “Wes had convinced himself that he wouldn’t react to the male this time”; “a slim, dark-clothed female was taking a large document tube”; “‘Just males,’ [Wes] acknowledged”; “Fuck, he wanted this male”; “‘So don’t try to fucking tell me you’re not a good male’”; “God, this male was so fucking sweet”; “Wes was a protective male.”
What the fuck is going on? What is this weird insistence on using male/female? Do we want everyone to know that they are biologically male/female? Is there some bias here that I ought to know about so I can walk away before reading any of Diane’s other books?
You can kind of see a thread between S&S’ Seth and Raider and this book’s Wes and Rhys. They’re not copy-paste similar, but you can see some similarities, particularly in how Raider and Rhys both have tortured and abused pasts while Wes and Seth have dark violent ones. There is also a thread wherein the plot takes forever to manifest and then suddenly everything comes to a head at around 89% of the book and then we have to have climax and denouement in the remaining 11%. Yikes. That is not enough book for that much development.
So I did not enjoy this book, or Wes, or Rhys, or the relationship between Wes and Rhys. It took forever for there to be any kind of revelation between them, and unlike S&S where Seth and Raider at least improved their relationship through sexy times (being able to ~open up to each other, EMOTIONALLY & METAPHORICALLY U GUYS, GET UR HEADS OUT OF THE GUTTER), Wes and Rhys both just fuck without actually improving their relationship. And what do you know, once they started telling each other about themselves, they actually got to trusting each other. What a newfangled concept.
It’s also because of this that I feel annoyance instead of sympathy or empathy for Rhys. He has gone through abuse, and I get that because he hasn’t been able to deal with his past he just runs away from his problems and is apparently in the “walk it off” school of thought. But it’s because of his decisions to not deal with them so that he won’t viciously freak out that he puts people other than himself in hurt or danger. And I feel like this wasn’t pointed out to him enough, that through his inaction, he is a danger not just to himself, but to others.
In one scene, Rhys is freaking out to the point where his “commander”, Kyr, feels he has no choice but to physically subdue and then sedate Rhys. They both apologize for it later, but by that point, I am over both of them. Kyr for using force on Rhys, and Rhys for letting it get to the point where people who care for him have to use force on him because they’re afraid he might physically hurt himself. They put each other in such shitty situations. Get therapy, nerd. Killing demons does not count as therapy. Rhys and Kyr are supposedly seriously good fighters. What if Rhys had lashed out and the situation had escalated?
Rhys also keeps flipping out on Wes, and the only thing that could possibly be holding this together is the fact that Wes believes that Rhys is his mate. Wes constantly apologizes to Rhys for his outbursts, and Rhys apologizes for making Wes have outbursts — but the thing is I think if Rhys controlled how Wes got the information, or if the info came from Rhys, then maybe we (I) wouldn’t be in this position (of being annoyed with Rhys).
Also, because we are so caught up in Rhys’ drama, Wes gets the short shrift. He is just there to provide support for Rhys, which feels so unfair. I almost wish Rhys had dealt with a majority of his drama elsewhere, because people are always rushing to comfort and defend and praise Rhys: so we know about his fighting prowess, ability to ghost, so on. But what about Wes? Other than his initial fight scene, I didn’t know more about his strengths.
Can he stand on an even footing with Rhys? Or with any of the other Hush members? Does he have anything to offer other than his contained violence and his ability to stalk and subdue vampires and demons, as long as they’re not part of Hush? That said I haven’t read any of the other books so maybe this is Diane’s style, where one half of the couple is called “powerful” and we leave it at that. But frankly, Wes doesn’t seem all that competent.
Add to that, the story also takes forever to take shape, and then suddenly everything is chaos in the end. There are only two things to know from this book:
1. The vampire queen Amarada suspects that the Brotherhood of Limp Dicks wants to depose her in league with demons as they believe vampires are ~descended from demons. They want to resurrect(?) an age-old vampire, Kadaros.
2. Kadaros’ body (he was born from a vampire-demon union) was stored under the castle, and had been for quite some time (centuries?) — and this body is not dead. It is also, however, not alive. A Schroedinger’s vampire, if you will.
But this book takes forever to let you know these two very measly pieces of information. And by the way, neither of them are resolved, likely because you have to read the next volume, which will probably feature Ronan.
And lastly — Diane insists on using “male” and “female” instead of “man” or “woman”, or, hell, even just the gender-neutral “person”, to the point that it becomes really fucking awkward. It doesn’t flow as naturally, and it came to the point that it would throw me off.
Here are some samples: “Wes had convinced himself that he wouldn’t react to the male this time”; “a slim, dark-clothed female was taking a large document tube”; “‘Just males,’ [Wes] acknowledged”; “Fuck, he wanted this male”; “‘So don’t try to fucking tell me you’re not a good male’”; “God, this male was so fucking sweet”; “Wes was a protective male.”
What the fuck is going on? What is this weird insistence on using male/female? Do we want everyone to know that they are biologically male/female? Is there some bias here that I ought to know about so I can walk away before reading any of Diane’s other books?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 24, 2024
I have only read maybe two or three M/M books in my lifetime and honestly only remember two which I'm sure many know from JR Ward's BDB series. Quinn and Blay which I loved and had such a great long build up through several books and even a novella about their mating. In the same series there was also the cuties Rhun and Saxton who were just so adorable.
What I learned from reading Ward's stories is that when done right love shines in all different forms, shapes, and colors and you can be educated even when you have been told by those around you and society that something is not right or normal. I could feel through the words the love, conflict, trauma and pain and the desperate need to feel loved. Which by the way is all we all want.
Yes these are fictional characters but while reading they become real in my mind which bring up another point; representation. The more stories I read that are different and represent all different types of issues and human connections the more I appreciate those around me regardless of their race, sexuality, or religion.
I bring this all up because I felt that this story is one I will add to the ones I mentioned earlier. I will always remember Rhys and Wes. Ms. Diane capture my attention and I really felt for these two men. Their pain, trauma, struggles and oh my goodness the love was just fantastic. I must say better that all the other books just because of Rhys. He was the best character and became my favorite.
The sex was written I personally felt respectfully and it felt normal which I now is not the best word to use but bear with me I don't not want to offend anyone just trying to give the author kudos for a wonderful story and for making these characters loving, flawed and perfect.
What I learned from reading Ward's stories is that when done right love shines in all different forms, shapes, and colors and you can be educated even when you have been told by those around you and society that something is not right or normal. I could feel through the words the love, conflict, trauma and pain and the desperate need to feel loved. Which by the way is all we all want.
Yes these are fictional characters but while reading they become real in my mind which bring up another point; representation. The more stories I read that are different and represent all different types of issues and human connections the more I appreciate those around me regardless of their race, sexuality, or religion.
I bring this all up because I felt that this story is one I will add to the ones I mentioned earlier. I will always remember Rhys and Wes. Ms. Diane capture my attention and I really felt for these two men. Their pain, trauma, struggles and oh my goodness the love was just fantastic. I must say better that all the other books just because of Rhys. He was the best character and became my favorite.
The sex was written I personally felt respectfully and it felt normal which I now is not the best word to use but bear with me I don't not want to offend anyone just trying to give the author kudos for a wonderful story and for making these characters loving, flawed and perfect.
January 12, 2024
This was by far the most emotional and sexiest book of the series...dang! Now, i don't usually, purposely, choose to read m/m romance...not because i have anything against m/m romance but i'm a heterosexual girl so i can relate more to a m/f romance. The romance in this book though was SO GOOD and SO emotional!! I LOVED IT!! The relationship between all the 'brothers' is such a big part of this series and it's so sweet how protective they all are of each other. Another thing i love is how past couples aren't just dropped once they get their HEA in their book, they're all still very much a part of the next book and you still get to see previous relationships progress and grow. I can't say enough good things about this series and will continue to shout from the roof tops that anyone who loves PNR and are fans of the BDB should read this series!! It is seriously very similar in vibe but not so much that it feels like a copy cat and another plus is that there's no brand name dropping, slang or constant use of acronyms, which the BDB is known for...it's fine and that will always be one of my fav PNR series and an auto buy, but all those things can be a bit much. The next and final book in this series comes out on Jan 23rd and they're all included with Unlimited Kindle so go read these!!!
January 21, 2024
Oh my goodness....
I think the story line was weaker than the others that's why there were dozens of pages describing, talking about the sex between Wes and Rhys everytime. And there were a lot, that's all they seemed to do when they got together. I guess vampires don't have to worry about their sphincters! To me there would have been 100 less pages if some of that was taken out. I can honesty say I was bored with the sex scenes I had to read for them.
I gave is three stars for the back story.
Why did idiaos? keep switching to God??
One more book that comes out in a few days. I guess it will deal with Ronan and the new transporting demon lord who had to kill a guard and open the gate to transport. Though he said he could not transport some place he'd never been...he ran straight to the basement vault. Then transported while in the house he'd never been in before.
I think the story line was weaker than the others that's why there were dozens of pages describing, talking about the sex between Wes and Rhys everytime. And there were a lot, that's all they seemed to do when they got together. I guess vampires don't have to worry about their sphincters! To me there would have been 100 less pages if some of that was taken out. I can honesty say I was bored with the sex scenes I had to read for them.
I gave is three stars for the back story.
Why did idiaos? keep switching to God??
One more book that comes out in a few days. I guess it will deal with Ronan and the new transporting demon lord who had to kill a guard and open the gate to transport. Though he said he could not transport some place he'd never been...he ran straight to the basement vault. Then transported while in the house he'd never been in before.
January 18, 2024
this is m/m
I like the series and the overall story, but this is a m/m romance and I much prefer f/m which has been in the previous Books in the series. There seemed to be a lot of bedroom and lot less fighting and action in this book.
I like the series and the overall story, but this is a m/m romance and I much prefer f/m which has been in the previous Books in the series. There seemed to be a lot of bedroom and lot less fighting and action in this book.
July 6, 2023
Rhys and Wes’s story is steamy, yet tender. It shows there can be love after trauma. I hope the next book in the series is Ronan’s story. I have so many questions and I need answers!
April 14, 2024
Good story extention, I just skip the erotic sex pages as they aren't my thing.
October 19, 2024
Book was OK. I still feel like it's a BDB copy cat. I also think there were way too many smut scenes. Every other page, they're screwing!
December 4, 2023
A lot of gore, underworld vibes and heaving spice but somehow the brooding, dangerous, trigger happy vigilante vampires are… sweet…
There is something about all of the hush members but Rhys and Wes struggling to deal with the past and the present was a tender, sympathetic and sometimes downright hilarious tale.
You feel for the boys and cheer for them by the end. You won’t like this book if a same sex romance isnt your thing.
Strangely even the ( reasonably graphic) spice is done with a sense of caring and compassion. It adds to the story.
Wes and Rhys are lost souls for different reasons.
It was an interesting take having the female gaze in difficult subjects without brutal frankness.
And of course demon slaying. Lots of demon slaying.
Good fun. My favourite one in the series.
There is something about all of the hush members but Rhys and Wes struggling to deal with the past and the present was a tender, sympathetic and sometimes downright hilarious tale.
You feel for the boys and cheer for them by the end. You won’t like this book if a same sex romance isnt your thing.
Strangely even the ( reasonably graphic) spice is done with a sense of caring and compassion. It adds to the story.
Wes and Rhys are lost souls for different reasons.
It was an interesting take having the female gaze in difficult subjects without brutal frankness.
And of course demon slaying. Lots of demon slaying.
Good fun. My favourite one in the series.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews