Ryan J

This book was weird. After so many glowing reviews (and an excited endorsement by Gizmodo), I really wanted to like it. But it was so disjointed and all over the place that it was really hard to enjoy. The writing was good, and certain parts of it grabbed attention, but then it would cut away from a scene with no explanation and never mention it again. Then everything was very hastily explained at the end to try and tie the story together.

It wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't live up to the hype for me.

This is a good book, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It reads like a dry biography as a standard chronology of Lincoln's life, just with vampires. I expected a much more action packed read, more thriller than documentary. That's not to say it's a bad book, because I did enjoy reading it. It just wasn't what I'd hoped it would be.

Even as a guy, I enjoyed reading this book. It was funny, emotional, and and had some great character development. You really felt like you got to know these people and understood their problems. I also really liked the way it was written. BUT! The book has a problem...it's more documentary than fiction. The author is trying to push an agenda and raise awareness about domestic abuse issues. That's all well and good, but it's not clear at all that this is the intention of the book. It shouldn't be presented as normal fiction, in my opinion.

As long as you understand that this book has an agenda before reading it, then go for it, you'll probably like it a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't know this before reading, so I felt like the book was a deception of sorts. A documentary masquerading as fiction. It left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of the book, which is a shame, because I actually did enjoy the book.

This is definitely a young adult story and if you come into it knowing that, it's a very enjoyable book. It's a story of a magical world without being a rip-off of Harry Potter. The story focuses more on characters than on the magic environment itself, which makes the beginning of the book somewhat jarring. More than once I double checked to see if there was a book that came before this that introduced things that I was expected to know before reading this book.

But you get drawn into the story quickly and it's a quick, enjoyable book. Being a young-adult story, it does lack the intensity and depth of a more advanced novel. Things definitely come a little too easily to the main character, and she is able to solve the crisis a tad too quickly.

But, like I said, if you come at it knowing what to expect, it's a very good story with great writing that describes the scenes of magic in ways that make them almost come to life.

The story has its fair share of violence, but there's almost nothing in the way of language or sex, which is refreshing for a young-adult novel. I would have no problem recommending this book to anyone, adult or teen.