Jeri Smith-Ready - Wicked Game

Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, '60s psychedelia, '80s goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers just how the DJs maintain their cred: they're vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
Ciara's first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WVMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station -- and the link it provides to their original Life Times -- the vampires would "fade," becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover is a matter of life and undeath.
To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara rebrands the station as "WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock 'n' Roll." In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs' vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around -- next to Ciara's complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the "gimmick" enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren't so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher -- and the perils graver -- than any con game Ciara's ever played....

Comment: This is another title I had in the pile from the years I was dedicated to the PNR genre, in the hopes it would be the beginning of one more series to get addicted to.

In this story we meet heroine Ciara Griffin, a woman we learn has not exactly had a very straitlaced career and was, in fact, a con artist, but now she is hoping to change her life and to do so, she is looking for a job. That is how and why she is doing an interview for a radio station when the story begins and is precisely her past that convinced the interviewer to give her a chance. Ciara soon discovers that the DJs at the radio are all vampires and have their unique quirks. One of them, Shane, catches her eye but can Ciara really afford to start something that could put her in trouble before she even starts? What about the big company that wants to buy the radio station to change it into any other predictable station, thus putting the vampires in jeopardy if they don't have a task to keep them in the right path? Even worse, there are some old vampires who don't want Ciara's strategies to bring the radio station more money to succeed.. is Ciara going to find a way to make everything work?

Besides the the expectation of a story with paranormal elements and romance, the only other reason I added this to my TBR was likely related to the fact I had read other stories with similar premises and liked them at the time. With premises I mean a story with a heroine who would discover she is part of a new world with more than humans in it. This was pretty much my mood when I started, that the story would follow a certain pattern, but I was positively surprised the setting would be a radio station and that perhaps there would be some music content too.

In fact, that was so, Ciara starts working at the radio as a marketing assistant (or something like that) and the author does include several songs and musicians and music related content to add veracity to the DJs work. I wasn't as fond of the fact Ciara had been a con artist and I cared nothing for the stuff she would think of from time to time about her past and that of her family, also con artists. Was this meant to make her look heroine material since she now wants something steady and honest, but then would be confronted with her past and the skills she obtained that way? If so, i wasn't too keen on having the plot going that direction...

Well, at first I was still quite entertained because some things were only possibilities and might not really happen as I feared and I wasn't adverse to accept the existence of vampires in this world. It's true that the whole idea of them being stuck at the era in which they were turned seemed a little ridiculous, but fine, I went with it. Not too far into the story we are also introduced to the shark-like company and that they want to buy the radio station the vampires work at to turn it into just one more commercial station. There are some secondary situations related to this I also found uninteresting, but by then I was already convinced this would not be the best story ever... still, I felt like finishing to see what they do about the "takeover".

In the midst of these complicated things - and Ciara's trying to do her job - there was also the hint of romance. Shane, to be honest, did not even manage to stay on my radar and I already barely remember details about him, I just know he was as quirky as the other vampires, but was younger and he and Ciara had an apparently obvious connection. Their romance doesn't get to be fully exploited, and I assume this will still be developed in the next installments, but I feel rather indifferent to what was going on about them. I mean, I don't dislike them as a couple but I don't feel invested enough to want to know what happens to them.

All the romance and plot details were still, despite my opinion, more or less going on at a steady rhythm of progression when the old vampire posse element comes up. To be fair, I don't see the need for this, and to me the story would have gained by having been focused on less elements and less complications, considering everything about this "world" was new and still being established. I suppose this simply follows the trend of the genre at the time and an enemy had to be included and important for the main plot line. I think this only withered the story and forced situations which were unnecessary. I'd have preferred the author to have taken this world into a more positive level instead of creating silly conflicts.

Closer to the end, there is a new character introduced and I was annoyed at why would this happen, it was avoidable as well. Plus, some of the quirkiness which was cute in the beginning, started becoming a little irritating because it limited the plot and the vampires Ciara helped at the station. I thought the story could have gone into a more appealing path, but in the end I don't mind stopping here.

Grade: 5/10