Guilty Pleasures is the first book in L.K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. Anita Blake is a animator and a vampire hunter. She doesn’t follow the new ideology that vampires are people too; they’re still monsters to her. She’s a court sanctioned executioner and she has a cynical view on life. She doesn’t agree with vamp politics and she doesn’t work for vampires, but when a run-in with the Master of the City goes wrong, she takes on a case that goes against everything she has ever believed. Throughout the story, we begin to see what makes Anita tick and how her relationship with the vampires begins to change.

Hamilton tells a story of what would happen if vampires and lycanthropes were real and had all the rights that the non-supernatural possessed. Just like any cultural group, there are beliefs and rituals that many follow and the supernatural world is no different. The politics of the underground are tricky and Hamilton throws Blake in feet first without a thought to her beliefs. Blake’s struggle to cope with her new relationship with the vampires, her conflicting views on the monsters, and trying to keep her professional and personal life separate from all the mess will keep readers entrench within each novel of the series.

For any readers who were a fan of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, this book, and series, is a guaranteed success.

Also reviewed by:
Love Vampires
Serial Experiment
Bitten by Books

Read Order:
Guilty Pleasures – review
The Laughing Corpse – review
Circus Of The Damned – review
The Lunatic Cafe – review
Bloody Bones – review
The Killing Dance – review
Burnt Offerings – review
Blue Moon – review
Obsidian Butterfly – review
Narcissus In Chains – review
Cerulean Sins – review
Incubus Dreams – review
Micah – review
Danse Macabre – review
The Harlequin – review
Blood Noir – review
Skin Trade – review
Flirt – review
Bullet (June 2010)