Urban Legend

by Erica Orloff

Urban Legend by Erica Orloff released on Jul 23, 2004 is available now for purchase.

Genres: Vampires, Action, Romance

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 2004

About the author

"Erica Orloff is a native New Yorker, novelist, blogger, mother of four, chronic insomniac, alt-rock loving, voracious reader (and prolific writer) who has written over twenty novels across a number of genres and pen names. She currently lives in Virginia where she rarely sleeps, roots for the Yankees and the NY Giants, knits in her almost-never free time, herds worms with her six-year-old Pirate Boy, and tries to hold onto what little sanity she has left." (http://www.ericaorloff.com/about.html)

Reviews

[Amanda Nan Dillon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Tessa is turned into a vampire after being bamboozled into marrying one without knowing it. She eventually flees to Shanghai and loses her OTL to opium. That day she vows to fight the drug trade as much as possible. She’s also Buddhist and it’s prevalent throughout the book. I’m not sure I’ve ever read another religious vampire before, especially one who tries really hard to live by the 5 tenets of Buddhism. Her maker finds her, tries to distribute a new drug in NYC just to spite her, and then a war ensues. She accidentally falls in love with a police detective, Tony Flynn, who’s investigating the drug deaths and deaths of drug dealers (guess who’s the vigilante killing them?).

One thing older romances do that tickles me to NO END is have their immortals be involved with key figures in history. In this case, Tessa owned a nightclub in Germany during Hitler’s reign. Tessa decides she’s over the Nazis and decides to burn her club down, with a bomb under the normal table of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels go boom.

It ends with her living to see another night, but there’s no discussion of turning Flynn into a vampire. He even mentions growing old while she stays the same in a joking manner, and talks about learning to live in the night. Doesn’t seem very HEA to me! I’m just going to assume she turns him within a few years and they fight crime as vampires together.

Vampire lore: they can eat food, sleep hard but don’t go dead, can only kill them reliably by beheading and burning; they don’t turn to ash unless they’re burned. Certain lines of vampires have different myths which have turned into beliefs, which is where the holy water, crosses, garlic, etc, enters into the zeitgeist. The vampire has to BELIEVE these things are harmful for them to BE harmful to them. No blood tears, can be harmed significantly but heal within a day or two at most.

Tropes: found family, hurt/comfort, FM age gap, wealth gap

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Your basic Harlequin romance. It was all right.

[Prof. Mohamed Shareef]

Urban legends are better than conventional legends because they can be used as anecdotes in classrooms. The urban kids appear to like them better than the village stories.

[Felicia Marie Ciaudelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book of Erica's that I read - it is my #1 fave.

[Ruby Bailey]

Loved it