I shelved this as "juvenile", which -- if this is a "New Adult" novel, and I think it's supposed to be -- must mean "juvenile" is where I put NA novels, because the tone of this felt very young-and-light to me, even when the subject matter really seems like it could have lent a lot of weight (in a good way) to the story, but didn't.

The author really seemed to want the reader to believe the protagonist had all the right feelings and inner conflicts about things that happened, with first-person inner monologue explaining to me how bad she felt about things, but actions speak louder than words sometimes. In this case, the actions were screaming TO HELL WITH THIS, LET'S GET TO THE FAST AND FUN ACTION-DRAMA! There's some excellent writing advice out there in the world instructing us all to "show, not tell", and while there are cases where that doesn't apply as readily I think following that advice very carefully would have helped overcome all this disconnect between supposed (and expected) state of the protagonist's heart and protagonist's actions. If the only way to convey that someone feels something is through describing the person's outward reactions, action will certainly reinforce the sense of those emotions for the reader, and make it more visceral and sympathetic. Almost none of that happened here.

That's probably my biggest gripe with this novel. It was an easy-breezy read, and I basically finished it in three sittings over two days, then still had time to start another novel on the second day. It kept things moving so that my interest (such as it was in the first place) didn't flag, it actually addressed a lot of difficulties of being a vampire that other books often overlook (though it really too-conveniently tied up the last, and perhaps biggest, hurdle with a bow in the last few pages of the book), and the characters were at least interesting in concept.

Descriptions didn't give me much to grab onto, and in many cases -- even for very central characters -- were almost entirely absent. That left me without much of a picture of them in my head, though a couple characters (including at least one who was there for only a single scene) got quite a bit more detail. The author got some bad information from somewhere about guns; a Glock 22 cannot just happily eat both 9mm and .40 S&W, because it's only chambered for .40 S&W (though a cop carrying a Glock 22 is at least pretty common; the Browning is less so). There's obviously a love triangle brewing by the end of the book, though it hasn't really arisen yet, and the one relationship that did "officially" start up (mostly off-page) seems weirdly innocent other than the blood-drinking scene.

Minor quibbles aside, it doesn't feel like a waste of time, in part because it took so little time to read. It was enjoyable enough to plow through it, but it doesn't impress me in any way whatsoever. As the two-star rating says on Goodreads, "it was ok" (though, technically, that should be either "OK" or "okay").
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