Welcome to First Impression Friday! This meme is created by Joe at JW Martin – Storeys of Stories. The rules are:

• Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.
• Did you think you’d love and ended up hating it? Or did you think you’d hate it and wound up loving it? Or were you exactly right?
• Link back to Storeys of Stories so everyone can enjoy reading all the First Impression Fridays out there!

Title: Hunting Prince Dracula (Stalking Jack the Ripper #2) by Kerri Maniscalco

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Published: September 19, 2017

Reading as: US hardback, owned

Bizarre murders are discovered in the castle of Prince Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula. Could it be a copycat killer…or has the depraved prince been brought back to life?

Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe’s best schools of forensic medicine…and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend.

But her life’s dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school’s forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.

“Perhaps it was time for fathers to teach their sons how to behave around young women. They were not born superior, no matter how society falsely conditioned them. We were all equals here.” 

Okie dokie, so, I finished reading Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper #1) by Kerri Maniscalco and I LOVED it. Great book, great story, great characters, it had the whole nine yards. I had purchased Hunting Prince Dracula in hardback back in February and pulled it out as soon as I was done with the first book. As of this writing I am on page 145 and things have started off a little slowly. Just within the last chapter or two the plot has started to pick up.

Early impressions? I still dislike Thomas. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he is a charming putz. Audrey Rose is still amazing. She is such a strong character and even though she is having some personal troubles during this story, she is holding it together like a champ. I’m also looking forward to learning more about the murders. Obviously a story with a Dracula theme is going to have corpses empty of their blood for our dear Audrey to examine. I can’t wait for her to find more clues to add to the mystery.

Right now, I am predicting  a 4/5 rating for this book. Stay tuned!