4.5 Stars - I recommend if you enjoy humorous fantasy, steampunk, and strong/confident female characters. This reminded me a bit of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (the movie), spunky, silly, and fun.

This book follows Alexia Tarabotti, a high born lady (but half-Italian spinster) in Victorian England. She's eccentric and confident, always has an appetite, and happens to be without a soul. Her soulless ability allows her to negate supernatural powers.... so when she touches a vampire, his fangs disappear. After she accidentally kills a vampire, and is accosted by grumpy Lord Maccon (Scottish, werewolf, grumpy...), and vampires start disappearing.... Alexia must find out what's going on in London.

Overall this book was hilarious and incredibly fun to read. I hadn't read any steampunk (or anything like it before), so it was a bit of an adventure. I appreciated how light it was (despite heavy supernatural plot), I laughed a lot, and quite a bit of it was steamy. It reads a bit like a romance novel... but then about half way through you get more plot. Overall, I felt that the steampunk elements were small and it read like normal urban fantasy (aside from the Victorian setting). I really didn't know that there were vampires or werewolves in this book before I started it. The most enjoyable part of this book for me was definitely Alexia's character, she's ridiculous but owns it, and is very confident and modern for the setting. Reading her observations about the world around her (ugly hats, lack of food at parties, etc.) is hilarious. I also particularly enjoyed her interactions with Lord Maccon, it's like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett but with a lot less brooding. I will be interested to see where the rest of the books go, but I'm not in a huge hurry to get to them.