Blood and Guilt
Jade Christy
Independently Published (2026)
ISBN: 979-8257969393
Reviewed by Sara Lancaster for Reader Views (09/2026)
I went into the novel Blood and Guilt: A Modern Vampire Romantasy by Jade Christy expecting the usual vampire story and came out stunned with what the author has created. This is book one of a series, and while this story takes its time—it’s deliberately, lovingly slow—the journey is addictive and unforgettable.
A simple farmer, happy, in love, and engaged to marry (and definitely not believing in vampires), is turned in a single night. In that same night, he commits the most dastardly act of his life. Unable to live with what he’s done and this sudden fact of his new and horrific existence, he wants to die. Immediately.
It’s only the intervention of a vampire-savvy priest, a man who sees past the fangs to something worth saving that keeps him from ending his life. Instead the newly-birthed vampire—Luka— holes himself away, surviving only because of a unique and special agreement, for fifty years. Alone, in self-imposed exile and expulsion with only stone and shadow and his library of gathered books to keep him company.
Until Claire.
Claire, a young woman from America, has found her way to Montenegro, and is running from her own life collapse. It’s not one she caused, but one that was simply visited on her, life doing what it does at times. The collapse was complete. Now she’s searching for a place to reclaim herself, a place to feel again without fearing everything will once again be torn from her. She finds her way to the little chapel in the hills above the old village where she unexpectedly meets the quiet, intelligent, yet starkly withdrawn man.
The story is intense, as we track every emotion and nuance of what the two main characters feel. It’s a stunning book. What makes the story work, though, with all of these intense emotions narrated moment by moment, is how it’s told. The writing and words are simple. Plain. Just ordinary words.
Yet the author weaves absolute magic, uncovering deep truths, with these words.
The truths hit, and bite, and you find yourself stopping cold every few pages. Marking the text. Thinking, and feeling. You see yourself and your own life and journey revealed clearly, and meaningfully. The result, also, is that you care for these characters. You become invested. You feel for them, and with them. You’re fully in their world.
The author’s skill is also apparent as she reveals new things consistently. An unknown piece of the world, the characters, or the plot, so you’re always slightly off balance, always leaning in. Again, the writing is plain, in a manner of speaking. Yet the truths underneath aren’t. Here is one example from Luka as he becomes aware of the newly discovered joy of simply having another creature close by, after so many years:
She smells alive.
And simply present.
Simple words and few, yet somehow they carry the ache of what he’s lost, lived without for fifty years, and what he’s starting to want again.
The opening, as well, drops you straight into his unwanted and painful transformation.
I don’t remember dying—but I remember the fangs.
The first thing I realize is that the night is too loud—and I’m no longer human enough to belong in it. And I’ll spend the rest of my life paying for what I do tonight.
Darkness presses in from every side. I feel alone, isolated, hungry, afraid.
Yesterday I was a happy, simple farmer in this small village. Ready to marry Ana. Curious about the world.
But now there is only darkness.
Not the quiet kind. Not the kind that settles gently after darkness.
The vampire’s personal torment never really lets up, hence the appropriate title for this novel, Blood and Guilt.
Yet as the priest who finds him—Father Petar—also tells him, decades later, tormenting himself isn’t repentance, it’s indulgence. That he needs to start living again, not just surviving.
And it is all this that the unexpected young visitor stirs in him.
As circumstances press in on the two, the romance builds, moment by moment, as they read each other and get closer. Luka fights it the entire way. It’s simply not for him.
He doesn’t deserve it, he tells himself, because of the vile act he committed decades ago. He is a monster. He does not deserve.
Yet as the story progresses, a wider world underneath the little chapel on the hillside with its stone crypt is also revealed. A master vampire rules the entire territory of vampires and holds court over them with the power of life and death and decision, and he becomes a strong player in the couple’s lives.
Is Blood and Guilt: A Modern Vampire Romantasy slowly paced? Yes, and therein lies its addictive beauty. Full disclosure: there were a few stretches where I felt the pace flatten. But to be honest? Not many.
Because that slowness is the point. This isn’t a book that rushes toward payoff; it’s a book that makes you sit in the ache, the guilt, the tentative reawakening, one true sentence at a time. It also ends on a real cliffhanger, and I’m definitely hooked for book two of the Vampire of Montenegro series, which thank goodness, is already available.
Because what has transpired in Luka and Claire’s life now will take real transformation to face. Can he, they…do it?
A soulless vampire, who actually, despite what legend tells us and despite his own conviction, has a soul. A woman looking for a way back to herself. And writing so unadorned it sneaks up on you and leaves a mark.
If you love exceptional slow burn reads that have real heart and meaning and that echo the human journey simply yet profoundly, then Jade Christy’s Blood and Guilt: A Modern Vampire Romantasy will be a treasured companion for your future reading escapes.