Friday 56: Vampires of El Norte

The Friday 56 is a weekly blog meme hosted by Freda’s Voice. How to participate: Grab a book, any book. Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay. Find a snippet, short and sweet. Post it, and link up on Freda’s Voice so everyone knows to visit.

This week I’m participating with: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas!

Blurb:

Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States invades Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

Friday 56 Excerpt:

With a brutal, wet cry, the vampire shucked off the last of its meaty bindings and lurched forward onto all fours. As it rose to its full height, Néstor shoved a bullet and gunpowder into the first pistol, then the second. Bullets found their marks in the vampire’s chest and neck; each blow sent shudders through its body, but still it loomed over them, a full head taller than Néstor. Blood slicked its hairless skull and the metal band around its throat, gleaming in firelight.

---

What do you think? Would you read this one? This is the book club pick for the Big Bad Booty B*tches Book Club.. and I haven’t made much progress so far because I’ve been in the middle of two other books.