Only One Coffin by A.J. Truman

Title: ⟫ Only One Coffin

Author: ⟫ A.J. Truman

Rating: ⟫ 4/5

Blurb: ⟫ I’m stuck sharing a coffin with the world’s perkiest vampire. This vacation is going to suck.

After centuries of eternal existence, and still mourning the loss of my lover to vicious slayers, I needed a few days of peaceful solitude at the Hotel Draugr.

But thanks to a double-booking mishap, I’m forced to share my coffin with Kilroy, a freshly bitten vampire who loves his new afterlife as much as he loves hanging ten. My unexpected room-mate is determined to show me how “totally awesome” being a vampire can be.

Doesn’t he know vampires don’t do sunshine of any kind?

Through epic snowball fights and midnight meetups at vampire speakeasies, the ice around my not-technically-beating heart begins to melt. And during days sharing our too-small coffin, one part of me has trouble staying dead.

Maybe this budding relationship has teeth…that is, if we can evade the slayers closing in on the hotel.

Only One Coffin is a grumpy/sunshine, forced proximity, paranormal MM romcom featuring a 300-year age gap, coffin cuddling, and a vampire bro who wears flip flops no matter how cold it is outside.

Review: ⟫ With a neat twist on a few tropes such as age-gap, grumpy sunshine and forced proximity, Only One Coffin is mainly played for laughs. The puns drop thick and fast, blood is substituted for some truly entertaining food items and the relationship between Kilroy and Magnus is a sweet, fun read.

Magnus is still in mourning for the lover taken from him by the humans, and is making his annual trip to hide away in a frozen hotel when he is suddenly forced to face the reality of the fact that the rest of the world is still living. Kilroy comes along at a time when probably no one else would try to drag Magnus out into the world again, and is stagnating and, no pun intended, slowly dying.

Kilroy was most definitely one of those glass-half-full people that can be incredibly irritating or endearing depending on the mood you are in. He took being changed into a vampire as a ‘whoa, dude’ thing rather than a path to depression. I loved the idea of a group of vampires who help ‘newbies’ get on their feet, and on the whole Kilroy was fun in a seeing the world from a new perspective.

I did find the constant corrections to Kilroy saying things like good morning and good night a bit irritating after a while – yes, we get it, Magnus’s character is a little stuffy and formal but literally every single time someone said something like that, it felt like overkill. This gave me ‘Hotel Transylvania’ vibes, which was fun, and I did love how casually things like turning into a bat, etc. were discussed.

I would describe this as a nice, easy read, with an interesting take on the whole vampire life, and a sweet love story.