Beneath the Bloody Aurora by Beka Westrup was the choice of my book club, and up to about 60% of the way through this book was really good. For a video review of this book, click here!

This review does contain spoilers.

I really wanted to like this book.  I thought Clio had so much potential as a character, and she showed so much growth the first 60% of the way through this book.  And the setting of this book was absolutely divine.  The book takes place in this artic hotel in the middle of winter where you can see the Aurora Borealis almost every night.  As much as I hate the cold, the author painted such a beautiful image for me, that I truly wanted to visit.

I also really loved that the author wrote this book as a way to heal from things that happened in her personal life.  That is such a scary thing to do, and I am so proud of her for doing it.

However, the biggest problem with this book is truly how ridiculous it seems to get as it continues on.  This is also a romance book, with probably one of the slowest burn romances I have ever read in my entire life.  Nothing really happened until almost 80% of the way through the book.  80 PERCENT!!!

Nikolai is the hero of our book, and he is a vampire just trying to survive through the eons he is alive.  He needs to feed off of blood but doesn’t truly want too, and if he wasn’t so scared of dying, he would have walked into the sun eons ago.  When Clio finally does realize there is something off about him, she immediately jumps to the conclusion he is a cannibal, and treks out in this winter wonderland (barely prepared) in a chance to escape him.  Obviously there is a huge snow storm, obviously he finds her, and she is obviously safely brought back to the hotel.

Clio is the heroine of our book and she has come to Nikolai’s hotel for two reasons.  Once, she is getting married to this terrible human being named Duncan.  And two, she is there in the hopes that she can find some information about her friend Nyah, who was brutally murdered.  Was Nyah murdered at this hotel?  NO!  So I am not entirely sure why Clio would be trying to find answers at the hotel for the murder that did not take place, at the hotel.

If you are wondering if it gets better from there, the answer is no.  Once Clio and Nikolai are finally intimate together, we as the reader find out Clio is this other type being (I am calling her a goddess for simplicities sake) and she can basically purify things with the salt she shoots from her hands.  Yes, you did read that correctly.  As the romance between Nikolai and Clio heats up, she decides to break it off with Duncan.  What is Duncan’s response you ask?  To whip her back with his belt.  Nikolai finds out and wants to kill him (rightfully so) and so through a bizarre chain of events, it is revealed that Duncan has given himself over to a Demon, and Clio purifies him with her salt shooting hands.

Overall –  I truly don’t know what to say about this book.  I a giving it two stars simply because the first 60% of the book was good, but sincerely, please read this at your own risk.

Beneath the Bloody Aurora – Beka Westrup

Cost* – eBook is $5.99 and Paperback is $18.99. 

*Cost is based upon what the book cost when book review is published