I absolutely love Aphrodite Jones’ books, and you can find her on my favorite author’s list. When you follow me, I am going to sound redundant on a few of the books that I read. I have my favorites, and they are just like actors or singers to others; there are ones you can’t find a flaw in their writing. However, occasionally, I have read books by other authors that I had never heard of before. I grade them just like my favorites.
Anyway, this was a different type of book. It is about some teens who thought they were witches, warlocks, and vampires. At the end of the book, you will find out how that defines who they are and what they do. But at the beginning of the book, Jones makes you aware of all the players and I love it when an author does that, because then you don’t get in the middle of the book, and you’re like what, who are you and where did you come from? I gave this book 5 blood splatters out of 5. I don’t get into horror or sci-fi a lot, but this was by one of my favorites and I wanted to see what she seen in this story to make her want to write it.
Spoiler Alert
Since this is my first book blog, I will let you know right here at the beginning: I am terrible at spoiling a book. I try to start a blog with no spoilers, and then one thing leads me to another, and before you know it, I have practically given the book to you in a couple pages.
The Embrace talks about mainly 5 teens that think they are witches, vampires, and warlocks. They believe they are people of the “undead.” Two of the teens, Dana Cooper and Chastity Keesee, believe they are witches. Then you have Scott Anderson, who believes he is a male witch (the warlock, but they don’t call him that), and he is striving to become a vampire like their leader, Roderick Ferrell, he is waiting for the lead vampires embrace. In the book, these four bounce back and forth about what they are and who they are. Sometimes, and this is another part of who is who, when you get to the middle of the book, they go by their real names, and then other times, they go by the name that Rod has given them. He has his own pet names for them. The last teen is Heather Wendorf. She was also waiting for Rod’s vampire embrace to become a full undead vampire.
Rod bounces from home to home. When he becomes too much for his mother to handle him in Florida, she sends him to live with his granddad in Kentucky. Heather is in Florida, and Charity, Scott, and Dana are from Kentucky. Rod is trying to bring together a coven with many followers, and he is planning to do it with this combination of characters in the two states. He tries to get Heather to run away with the others to Kentucky. He tells her about this big following he has in Kentucky. Heather comes from a Christian home, and her parents already don’t like that she goes around wearing all these goth clothes, but they allow her to express herself how she wants to, just monitoring her to make sure she don’t get too far gone.
Every time Rod talks to Heather about running away and she gives a brief hesitation, he offers to kill her parents for her. Heather doesn’t think he is serious about it. She truly thinks that he is goofy. She would never tolerate someone killing her parents.
When Rod comes to Florida to take Heather away with them, he can keep all the various others in the dark, and the only one with the full goal and itinerary is Rod. He will tell Scott what his part to do is, which is to go with him and help him. Charity and Dana are to go pick up Heather at her house and take her to say goodbye to her boyfriend. It is only after Rod takes Scott to Heather’s house that Scott finds out he is going to help kill Heather’s parents. Scott is a follower. He tells Rod he is up for that. That is what they do after Dana and Charity pick Heather up.
Scott and Rod show up at the meeting place with Heather’s mom’s car and her mom’s keys in the ignition. Heather asks Rod when they all moved to her mom’s car, “How do you have mom’s car and her keys?” After she asks repeatedly, Charity eventually breaks the panic and answers her by revealing that Scott and Rod were the ones who killed her parents. She freaks out. She never thought Rod was serious about that. What would make him do that? She was coming with them without him doing that.
They were supposed to be headed to Kentucky, but all they really did was drive around. Finally, Charity said that she wanted to call her mom and get a motel room for the night. Her mom tells her there is a Howard Johnson’s just down the road from them. Charity’s mom offered to pay for their one-night motel stay until they could determine their travel plans. Charity’s mom had already heard about the Wendorfs’ killing and learned that someone was searching for her daughter and the others. We should give credit to this mom; it was only after this that they got arrested and the entire story came out, but the police had to keep going from person to person because no one had the entire story except Rod.
In the end, a judge sentenced Roderick Ferrell to life in prison without parole. Scott Anderson received a 40-year sentence. Dana Cooper received a sentence of 17.5 years. Charity Keesee accepted a plea deal and received a 22-year sentence. This was the shocker, and what upset the townspeople and her family the most. The state did not charge Heather Wendorf. She could convince the police and the prosecutors of her innocence. She told them she was afraid of what they would do to her if she turned them in. Heather’s dad’s estate was worth a million dollars. Her sister and she split that estate.
For a true crime story, it was definitely off the wall and something random you don’t hear of in the news. I promise you will not regret reading this book. The link to Amazon for this book is under Aphrodite’s Name in the first paragraph.
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