Thursday, 21 June 2018

Tome Thursday: Dearest Ivie


Hello everyone!

If I tell you when I'm typing up this blog post you probably won't believe me, and yet, here I am.

It's 6 in the morning and I'm breathing in the fresh, summer air from outside without melting, because it's said that today is supposed to be the hottest day of the season so far before we get a storm front and it rolls over everything like some sort of bulldozer.

And yes it's bringing lower temperatures right along with it, so there we go.

I got up early because I feel as if I get more things done when I'm not halfway to a melting point, and judging by what I can hear from the city itself I'm not the only one who thinks that.

So without further ado I'm going to stop blabbing and actually start the blog post which will go up about twelve hours from now.

As I'm not in the mood for something complicated, I chose Dearest Ivie.

Now, like I said before in one of my reviews, there's a whole heap of J. R. Ward's books that I've already reviewed, but this is a novella and, while set in the Black Dagger Brotherhood world, it's not connected to it in terms of warriors and such so I won't be linking the lot of them at the bottom. I WILL be linking the last one I read and reviewed, however, and if you follow THAT link, you can find the rest of them.

Anyway.

Dearest Ivie was my saving grace before starting The Thief, after the debacle that was number 15.

I'm not kidding.

I wasn't feeling like reading 16 before I sat through Dearest Ivie, and I have to say that the novellas seem to be working out much, much better for the Warden recently, or maybe it's just me.

Anyway.

Ivie and her cousin are at a bar where Ivie is lamenting the fact that she didn't get hired for some sort of nursing position (she works for Havers) because of her apparent age when her cousin notices one of their kind (aka vampire) watching them, especially Ivie, and then Silas approaches the table.

As he's an aristocrat and they don't usually pick up civilians, Ivie pretty much tells him to go to hell and not play games with her, but even so, she pops up to the restautant he mentioned the next evening (for any of you wondering, it's the one Trez and iAm own) and the pair of them hit it off, despite Ivie's worries that it won't last.

And so it continues, with Silas wooing Ivie and taking her to different restaurants which would constitute as them travelling the world, something they can't do because he's returning to the Old Country soon.

Which means this relationship is doomed to fail from the get-go.

Which only makes it run hotter because neither of them can deny their attraction to each other.

Ivie even introduces him to her lively and VERY middle-class family, where Silas fits right in and in one of the funnier scenes of the entire novella he and Ivie's father end up agreeing on just about everything, making her eyeroll.

But then ... something happens.

Ivie thinks that Silas stood her up on a date when her cousin, who'd been promoted at Havers' clinic to work in the VIP section, takes her through to a room where Ivie finds Silas - and learns the real reason why he can't fully commit to her.

He's dying.

The vampire equivalent of a disease that completely shuts down the body's functions is ravaging through his system, which nearly breaks the female who's fallen in love with him.

And truth be told it broke MY heart, especially the scene where her father comes to comfort her. I admit I cried a full ocean of tears at that one and then some.

Havers comes up with a radical treatment for Silas, thinking that perhaps a bone marrow transplant might work, like it does with humans, and a wide search goes out to find a matching donor, which turns out to be Ruhn, a vampire we've already met and Saxton's lover from the Black Dagger Brotherhood mansion. 

With a guest assist from Doc Jane and Manny Manello, the procedure is complete and then it's a waiting game - until Silas suddenly wakes up.

And keeps getting better.

The process not only saves his life but it also transforms his cells so they are pretty much the same as Ruhn's, who develops a friendship with both Silas and Ivie.

With Silas cured, he and his lady-love then decide to spend the rest of their days loving one another (and as the reader knows that it was a position with SILAS that Ivie hadn't been hired at during the beginning of the novel, this is fitting) and try to find his brother, who might also be a carrier for the disease.

But in the meantime ... there's a big house with tons of rooms and no one to bother them.

Time to let them be, true?

xx
*image not mine

Hirah: “So … You’re dating my daughter.”
Silas: “Yes, sire. I am.”
Hirah: “Uh-huh. And you’ve been to her apartment, have you?”
Silas: “Yes, sire, I have.”
Hirah: “Oh, you have, have you—”
Ivie :“Dad! Come on, this is—”
Silas: “And I don’t really care for it.”
Hirah: “You don’t really care for her apartment? She pays for that place herself, you know. Not out of some trust fund. She works hard doing good honest work to earn her money—”
Ivie: “Okaaaay, let’s just take this down a few hundred degrees—”
Silas: “I worry about her during the day. I mean, all those humans around her doing dumb things. What if there’s a fire? What if someone tries to break in? She’s defenseless. There’s nowhere to go. No escape hatch. No one around to help her. I’m not saying she can’t take care of herself. If I’ve learned anything about your daughter in the short time I’ve known her, it’s that she is self-sufficient, smart, and capable. I just think independence is fine, but she would be better off out here. Just as you were saying in the car. On the next hill. With a place of your own, but close enough so that your family can be there, preferably through an underground tunnel.”
Hirah: “… How many times have I told you this? I can tunnel it myself, you know.”
Silas: “He has a very valid position, Ivie. No one wants to take your independence away, I’m sure.”
Hirah: “Hell no. Plus you can dematerialize to the clinic from here.”
Silas: “Which was my point, and I know you’re going to insist on paying for it yourself—”
Hirah: “Always with the I’ve got it, I can take care of myself—”
Silas: “But, Ivie, if your father can do the labor, it will be less expensive. This is a really good idea—and you did say here is where your heart is.”
Hirah: “She said that? Ivie, I thought you were all about the city!”
Silas: “And family is critical, Ivie. No one will ever care for you as much as your parents and your blood do.”
Hirah: “… Yeah. What he said.”

Ivie: “… Can we go back to when you wanted to kill him, Dad? I was actually enjoying that horror so much more than this testosterone collusion the two of you are rocking.”
Dearest Ivie, p. 65

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