Author: S.L. Cokeley

First Published: 16 September 2025

“You’re just Olivia to me, and you’re my favorite person to be around.”

I will start by saying that I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review. These opinions are my own. Thank you so much to S.L. Cokeley for sending a copy my way!

Doxlothia University is home to the most elite vampire and werewolf communities and Olivia Osborne—an ambitious human ballerina—has come to university with her sisters. There’s just one problem—they aren’t in the blood donation program and their sweet blood puts a target on their backs. Insert Parker Owens, one of the most sought after men on campus, and a vampire/werewolf hybrid. His solution? Convincing her to fake date him to satisfy his pack and give her and her sisters the protection they need. 

After ensuring her sisters are safe, Olivia gets to focus on her own desires, but that’s hard when Parker keeps making appearances in her dreams, and both of them have an unexplained attraction to each other.

Is the relationship really fake if they can’t keep their hands off each other when they’re alone?

I loved every second of Just One Bite. I devoured this in a single day because I couldn’t put it down. This gave me all the warm fuzzy feelings of reading a new adult college romance with the added bonus of having werewolves and vampires. The romance had me swooning all over the place.

Olivia and her sisters received an opportunity of a lifetime to attend Doxlothia University. Olivia has been begging her father for years to attend, and she’s going to question why he’s finally letting them attend. The university is an Ivy League institution for elite vampires and werewolves. The only security for humans is to join the donor program. However, Olivia and her sister decline joining after their mother dies from health complications exacerbated by being a donor. The sisters’ sweet blood and lack of admission in the program put an instant target on their backs. Thankfully, Parker Owens steps in to help. He’s a vampire-werewolf hybrid, captain of the Rage team and one of the most sought-after guys on campus. The solution is simple. Olivia and Parker will fake date so his pack will offer protection to the sisters. But the more time they spend in close proximity, the lines between fake and real start to blur. Queue the drama.

Olivia is definitely a black cat type character. She’s closed off from showing emotion and being vulnerable after the death of her mother. Her father, in his own grief, has shut off from the world and kept his daughter close. Olivia has stepped up to be the emotional support for her sisters, Emma and Eva. All she cares about is ballet. It’s the one thing that keeps her close to her mother. She’s thrilled to be attending Doxlothia and will do anything to be part of its ballet company, as it’s a fast track to being able to audition for the world’s best ballet company. She’s driven and wants nothing to take away from her goals. I adored watching her open up and learn to let people in.

Parker has launched his way onto my top book boyfriend list. He is 100% a golden retriever. But with a slight psycho, possessive alpha tendency, which I love to see. Parker’s main goal is to land a contract in the pro league of Rage—a supernatural equivalent of hockey. He’s a powerful hybrid and feels like he’s not living up to the potential that everyone expects of him. He doesn’t want the responsibility of being a pack alpha or running for school council, despite his best friend, Zant, pleading. Parker just wants to live life on his own terms. His father has distanced himself after the death of his mother. It’s almost like Parker would rather disappoint people than try only to fail those under his protection. Parker is a hybrid — half vampire, half werewolf—which is the first hybrid I’ve read. I loved seeing how the vampire and werewolf sides meld together.

Romance has me swooning. I just ate up every second of this fake mate situation. Olivia and Parker are instantly drawn to each other. Both want to make their relationship real but are worried about the other person’s rejection since neither is great at talking about their feeling. I adored the scene where Parker helps Olivia after a long day of rehearsals. It was so good! I also love the moment where Olivia feeds Parker when he’s run down during the lead-up to the full moon. I will forever be a simp for care-taking scenes, and these were perfection.

At the start of each chapter, we get sections of the pair’s dreams. I was cheering when the importance of these dreams was revealed. They add so much to their story.

The plot gets intense. All eyes are on Olivia and her sisters, and it seems like everyone wants to claim them. Since Olivia and her sisters were kept away from supernatural communities, they don’t know all the unspoken rules. I really loved learning the lore of this world through Olivia. I always find this is the best way to learn about the world. The way S.L. Coakely did it was seamlessly.

I highly recommend you pick up Just One Bite. It was the perfect mix of sweet new adult college romance with an interesting high-tension plot you’d find in a paranormal romance. I will count down the days until we get the next book in the interconnected series. We get a hint in the epilogue of Emma’s story, and I need more stat! I am now dying to pick up S.L. Cokeley’s This Bind Us series, because I need all the sweet vampire romances in my life.