Stake Sauce, Arc 1: The Secret Ingredient Is Love. No, Really (Stake Sauce, #1)

Stake Sauce, Arc 1: The Secret Ingredient Is Love. No, Really (Stake Sauce, #1)

RoAnna Sylver

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

ARC 1, IN WHICH: A cute punk-rock vampire and a disabled firefighter-turned-mall-cop with a dark past join forces to battle the forces of evil. Jude used to leap out of helicopters to rescue/protect people from terrifying infernos. Now, by day, he protects the local mall from rowdy teenagers who ride their skateboards inside. By night, he protects the the parking lot, and the rest of Portland, from undead, bloodsucking creatures of the darkness. Or would if he could find them. Pixie refuses to bite anyone. Assault/murder/draining fluids isn’t punk, even if being a vampire really kind of is. He’s very hungry by now, and the much bigger, meaner, deadlier vamps kick him around on the nightly. Jude would love to find and fight some actual undead bullies. And Pixie could use some help staying… ‘alive.’ Time to make a deal. Of course, life still sucks when you’re a vampire who refuses to suck blood. Fortunately, there’s a really interesting new barbecue restaurant in the mall, with an intriguing new recipe. (They say the secret ingredient is… love. No, really.)

Publication Year: 2017


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  • dbsguide
    Mar 10, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/RoAnna-Sylver/e/B00OI321DO
    My blog link: https://dbsguidetothegalaxy.wordpress.com/
    RoAnna's blog link: https://sylvernebulae.wordpress.com/

    This book is fantastic. I love it. Buy a thousand copies and hand it out to a thousand people. Buy yourself a personal copy. Buy another one to frame on your wall – it’s that good. It strikes something personal in your heart and just makes you want to adopt all of the characters (which I really want to do) and care for them and give them everything they want. Now onto the actual review.

    I love vampires. I have no idea why I don’t read more vampire books. I was a total Team Edward chick (Jasper and Emmett definitely helped with that) and definitely rooted for all the vampires that were lurking around in Mystic Falls (not hard to do when there were barely any werewolves). So yes, I love vampires. And when I heard this was a vampire book I instantly jumped on board. But this isn’t just a vampire story, or a story about vampires. It’s a story about friendships, about love, romantic and platonic.

    Let’s just talk about the aro ace rep. And grey rep if you’re talking about Jude. That’s all I really want in life – good representation. That’s all anyone wants in life. That and the fact that the romantic and sexual orientation isn’t a great big part of the story – which is actually great!

    And that trauma and grief! I mean I could say ‘hey, don’t give me any of that. I need sunshine in my life’ but then I would be lying to myself because I read just as much angsty fiction as lovey-dovey fiction. And who needs sunshine when you’re a vampire, right? Anyway, I thought it was handled quite well (the trauma and grief) – something which needs to be seen again in fiction.

    Pixie is my favourite – ok, everyone is my favourite and they all have to deal with that which means you have to deal with me having tens of millions of favourite characters because that’s how it works in the book community. If you are able to choose a favourite character, you’re probably either very tired while reading the book or extremely distracted. Both of which I am. All the time and at the same time. But yes, Pixie is my main favourite in the novel. And then comes Jasper.

    So there’s the review. What are you still doing here? Go and read it!

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