Alexandra Hope

Unlike many modern vampire stories this novel is neither a thinly concealed rewrite of a classic tale nor filled with novelty for the sake of novelty. In particular the origin story of vampires provides a reasonable explanation for their powers without making them merely humans with powers.

The story centres on Olivia Cohen, who has spent the first seventeen years of her life in a gated community of immortality seekers. As daughter of the community leader she barely questioned spending her days sleeping and her nights drinking blood and learning the skills of a hunter. Now she is preparing for the rite of passage into adulthood; hunting a human for the first time. Torn between the safe but restrictive atmosphere of the community and the confusion of the outside world she struggles over whether to use this opportunity to leave permanently. However when a mysterious woman grants her the true vampirism the community seeks she finds herself unable to function in either world.

Although the plot of this book was sound and the background interesting, the prose style made it hard to read.

Many scenes were described with a few sentences containing three or four loosely linked clauses instead of a series of tighter shorter sentences; this made some of the exposition a touch hard to follow and made action scenes lack impact.

In addition the story is told from a third person perspective which changes point-of-view several times in a scene, and occasionally part way through a paragraph. Much of the description of feelings and reactions were stated by that character instead of experienced by the narrator, divorcing the reader partially from the emotions.

The issues with the prose make it harder to give definitive statements on the nuances of characterisation. However, the main characters did display identifiable and consistent personalities and interactions. The impact of an inhuman upbringing was noticeable in the children without removing the opportunity for sympathy, and bickering and claustrophobia of a gated community felt very realistic.

While the scenes themselves sometimes seemed diffuse, the pace of the reveals was good. Explanations and new evidence were provided after Olivia had started to become frustrated but before the reader joined her, making her search for the right course engaging rather than irritating to share.

Olivia’s struggle to accept or reject the community was brought to a believable conclusion without resolving the greater arc of the identities and goals other players in the vampiric struggle maintaining the sense that this story was part of a larger world, and leaving the opportunity for a sequel.

Overall I found this book a mixed experience. For me the story was just good enough to rise above the prose, so I would recommend it to people who are looking for a new perspective on vampirism and are able to turn off their inner editor.

I received a free copy of this book.… (altro)

Olivia grew up in a cult – a cult lead by her mother, Mar, and is dedicated to becoming vampires. Subsisting nearly entirely on a diet of human blood, they enjoy many advantages, but the final goal of changing and becoming a true vampire still eludes them, they need that one last key.

Olivia and her friend have many doubts about the lifestyle the cult espouses and even more trouble with the daily life and the combat regime until Olivia finally reaches her 17th birthday and her rite of passage- hunting a human.

Which is when Erika the Kitsune gets involved, Olivia achieves her cult’s goal, bodies start dropping and she’s briefly reunited with her estranged sister and her compelling fiancé. Then more bodies start hitting the ground and it’s a very steep learning curve.


This book has a really unique premise and world setting – which is always refreshing to see and doubly so with any book about vampires. There are so many vampire books out there that someone could write a book with vampire were platypus which cruelly beak their victims to death and it’s probably already been done 3 times.

So to mix up the kitsune and the vampires, to have this unique origin story and this truly odd concept of a human vampire cult, surviving on drinking blood and slowly developing minor vampire like abilities while seeking their end goal of finally finding a way to transform and you have a really unique concept.

This kept me reading the book for a long time because it was so refreshing and so imaginative.

But, in the end, I stopped at 70% and couldn’t go any further. Yes, I was defeated and this book became a DNF. There were several reasons – none of which would probably have defeated me on their own but together it was too much to tolerate


Firstly, the story. There isn’t really one. Olivia has her life in the setting of the blood cult. We have her struggles with accepting it, her worry about hurting and killing people coupled with loyalty for her mother. Then she goes on trip with her, meets her estranged sister, Alexa, and her fiancé Troy in a matter of supremely ridiculous coincidence then runs into Erika the Kitsune. Who promptly takes over. Before that there are odd storyline snippets – the school governor, Noah, the rivalry with the Mean Girl that are not developed don’t go anywhere and don’t seem to mean anything or have any real point.

From that point on, everything the characters do is because of Erika’s manipulations and orders for reasons unknown. And at 70% it was still reasons unknown. They trained with Erika because she said so. They stayed together because Erika said so. Olivia is a vampire because Erika made it so. Any revelations are made because Erika revealed it. It was a whole book of random events backed by a Deus Ex Machinae who wouldn’t go away and no actual development of the story, no reason for anything, no foundation for anything. At 70% I had absolutely no idea why anything in this book was happening beyond “Erika wants it to”. You can barely get away with that in a tabletop RPG let alone a novel.

Secondly, the writing is completely not to my taste. In fact I find it truly, horrendously awful and this nearly killed me in the very beginning. Actually I nearly DNFed it early simply because the opening chapters are so damn confused and mixed up and bewildering with random characters and an odd setting no-one even tries to explain that I was 5 seconds away from throwing it away as incomprehensible. The whole book is written in the third person but cleaving very closely to a character (so we know their thoughts). And that character changes. Completely at random, sometimes mid paragraph. There are times when I have absolutely no idea who has said a line let alone who is thinking what or who is feeling what. There’s immense info-dumps – vast, amazing info-dumps. Erika info-dumps, Olivia’s mother info-dumps. Olivia has dreams and “sudden memories that just come to her” that info-dump like a champion. Need something explaining? Let’s dredge up a random childhood memory for no good reason! Behold, infodump!

Read More… (altro)

I'm just not sure about this book. It took me a while to get through because I had to make myself read it. The story sounded great from the description and it started out alright, however, I just kind of found myself bored with it. I thought the characters were wonderful and I liked the idea of it, but something just seemed missing for me. I got about halfway through it and stopped caring. I wish I could put my finger on what discouraged me about, but I can't seem to do it. Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind for this novel and I will most likely try it again sometime in the future.… (altro)