Review--Once Burned by Jeaniene Frost

She's a mortal with dark powers...

After a tragic accident scarred her body and destroyed her dreams, Leila never imagined that the worst was still to come: terrifying powers that let her channel electricity and learn a person's darkest secrets through a single touch. Leila is doomed to a life of solitude...until creatures of the night kidnap her, forcing her to reach out with a telepathic distress call to the world's most infamous vampire...

He's the Prince of Night...

Vlad Tepesh inspired the greatest vampire legend of all—but whatever you do, don't call him Dracula. Vlad's ability to control fire makes him one of the most feared vampires in existence, but his enemies have found a new weapon against him—a beautiful mortal with powers to match his own. When Vlad and Leila meet, however, passion ignites between them, threatening to consume them both. It will take everything that they are to stop an enemy intent on bringing them down in flames.


It's only taken eons, but I have finally read Jeaniene Frost's Once Burned and I LOVED it! Was very excited to finally dive into Vlad's book. Although it is told from Leila's point of view, it was still nice seeing another side of Vlad!

Leila has special powers, she's not real fond of them, but they are apart of her. She is electrical, quite literally. When she touches people or things or someone brushes against her, they get shocked. And she can also see people's memories when she touches things connected to them. Psychometry it's called. She doesn't use her powers often. In fact, she's kept herself secluded so she doesn't touch people and shock them. She's not a total recluse. She is actually in a traveling circus and her best friend is a vampire.

Then one day she gets kidnapped by a group of vampires who want to use Lelia and her powers in order to find a particular vampire. Give you a guess as to who? Yup, Vlad. When Lelia is given objects to touch in order to find this fire starter, she is shocked beyond all belief when the vampire can hear her, sense that she is in his mind. It blows her mind, in fact. But she decides to use this weird connection in order to gain some help. And Vlad arrives to save the day!

But the battle is far from over. Vlad senses that Lelia is someone different, human, but gifted with special abilities that makes her a wanted item to the vampire behind her kidnapping. So he takes her to his home in Romania in order to protect her until this whole matter can be settled and solved. At first, Leila finds it hard to believe that Vlad is THE Vlad and thinks he's a bit of a poser who really loves his vampirism, but she soon learns how wrong she was.

It was quite an intriguing tale. There's definitely sparks flying between Vlad and Leila, no pun intended. They do seem to have some sort of connection. Lelia has seen Vlad at his darkest moment, which tends to happen when she touches people, she sees their darkest sin. She is shocked by Vlad's, but she soon learns more to him than what all the legends and poorly made movies have said.

Vlad has an old enemy out there, they share the same sire. Vlad believe him to be dead, since he killed him years ago, but apparently he missed something about his old "blood brother". And he wants Leila for his own dark purposes. Vlad isn't going to let that happen. Despite telling Leila upfront that there could never be true love between them, they start a relationship of sorts. And Vlad does everything in his power to protect Leila, despite his claims to not be able to love her completely.

The romance between Vlad and Leila was very nice! Jeaniene tends to write the best love scenes in my opinion and I am usually not one for the love scenes all the time. Jeaniene's are definitely my faves though! There were two that stood out the most and they were awesome! Jeaniene can really make you look at showers differently for the rest of time now!

I also enjoyed getting to see Cat and Bones again, even if for only a moment! It was still fun since Bones and Vlad do not always get along. Mencheres and Kira were there as well. Bones even gave Leila tips on how to keep a vampire from reading her thoughts, it was settled on singing the most annoying songs from the 80s--annoying in the sense that no vampire would want to remain in her head to read her thoughts when she's singing the same lines over and over! Although, I still cannot figure out which song it was that made Bones laugh out loud, when he was telling Leila this tip! I will have to ask Jeaniene in an email or something one of these days!

The ending was great as well! There's a few loose-ends, but since there will be another Vlad book, there has to be some! Things have definitely changed for Leila in more ways than one by the book's end and I sooo cannot wait to see where Jeaniene takes Leila and Vlad next! Once Burned was a thrilling and engaging read that I highly recommend to all Frost fans! It's about time we learn more about Vlad after seeing him popup several times in the Night Huntress series. I only wish that we could've gotten some "Vlad time" and been in his head to see what he was thinking about his new predicament! Oh well! Maybe Jeaniene will one day give us something from him!

And Ian too, but that's a whole other story!


Overall rating 5/5 stars