Danielle has been dragged to a famous nightclub in order to celebrate her 30^th birthday.  She didn’t have any desire to go there, but is trying to make her friends happy even though they’ve been acting a little strange.  Prepared to be miserable, she’s captivated by the man across the room that seems to only have eyes for her.  When he starts to come for her, she couldn’t be more surprised.

Armondes is a very old vampire that has a curse on him, that if he doesn’t mate with a woman who’s just about to turn thirty, he will show his age.  Since he’s over 2,000 years old, he doesn’t want to find out just what he would look like.  He’s tried to marry twice before, and they’ve both been disasters.  When he sees the woman his sister has brought to him this time, he’s hopeful that it will be different.  But there’s more going on than just his curse, someone is out to make sure that the curse happens, even if they have to kill both of them.

There is plenty of intrigue and passion in All I Need.  Danielle is very naive and hopeful. When Armondes gives her attention, she’s at first disbelieving, and then flattered.  For some reason I didn’t feel like these two had a lot of chemistry together, it was hard to believe that they were madly in love at first. I also thought that she forgave him a little too easily for making her a vampire for my taste. I couldn’t believe that after so long Armondes couldn’t figure out what was going on and that someone close to him was after his throne.  Someone that old doesn’t get to be that way without learning a thing or two.  I really liked the story though; there was some mystery and lots of action throughout. Near the middle of the book I started liking both characters a lot and believing that they really do have a special relationship.  I’m certainly going to be on the look out for more from Sally Painter, she shows a lot of talent for writing a good story.

Reviewed by Julie Bryan for The Road to Romance

January 21, 2005