Books like Crown of Shadows

Crown of Shadows; Or: Sorry, Priest, He's Just Not That Into You (Because He's an Undead Vampire and also Heterosexual.)all the standards established by the prior two novels are in place for the grand finale of this fitfully entertaining trilogy.at times amazing ideas and a compellingly realized world? check!fascinating 200 page novel filled with those amazing ideas but force-fed nonsense until it bloats into a 500+ page novel? check!all the things a goth teenager would love in a genre novel: romantic despair, romantic nihilism, an actual romance that is probably doomed, dark forests, an evil albino, devious godlings, heavy-breathing religiosity, warped obsessions, and a super-sized amount of melancholy? check!eye-rolling and clichéd lines like "he could get lost in her eyes forever" delivered on an upsettingly regular basis? check!a tedious pair of lovers who moon about their doomed love and their terrible pasts but don't end up doing a lot besides whining? check!okay, this pair was new to this novel. but they sure fit right in.supposedly heterosexual male protagonist who is, uncomfortably, the female author's stand-in... which gives his over-the-top obsession with the novel's Dangerous Undead Vampire Stud a decidedly strange, inexplicably homoerotic vibe? check!a disturbing and eventually offensive authorial obsession with the Dangerous Undead Vampire Stud, one that romanticizes the character and one that simply must give him some kind of happy ending, despite this also being a character who has tortured and killed perhaps thousands of women and who in the opening pages slaughters an entire family for the stupidest of reasons? check!perhaps the author's next project can be about that sexy bad boy Ted Bundy and the whiny priest who loves him against all odds. she already has the template ready to go.