The Survivors

I first heard of this series last year at BEA. I picked up the ARC of the second book in the series and met Amanda (very briefly) while I was perusing the exhibit hall. But it was the second book in a series, so it languished on my shelf for... well ever. I had the best intentions of picking up the first one and reading them both, but it just never really happened.

Until Amanda's awesome marketing for book three happened this year, that is. I couldn't look at Twitter or Facebook without being reminded that I had Book 2 and that meant I needed Book 1 so that I could buy Book 3 when it came out!

Awesome marketing job Amanda.

And then Bout of Books 8.0 rolled around right after Book 3 came out. What a perfect opportunity for me to read all three books! What I didn't expect was to sit down and read all three in two days.

Because I couldn't put them down.

If you follow me on Twitter, you saw incessant gushing.

I had no idea guys. NO IDEA.

You all know how much I hate publisher blurbs. That means I never read this one in its entirety. I went into the story mostly blind. I knew it was about the survivors of those accused during the Salem witch trials. I knew it was paranormal. That's about all I knew. I didn't read far enough down to get into “vampire” or “mythological creatures.” I didn't realize she had created an entire world with new creatures and its own mythology.

And this world is fascinating.

Sadie is, to me, the most fascinating of them all. I want inside her head. Seriously – I want to know how she ticks! We get some of it, but I want more! She's such a fascinating character study to me. She is an immortal who wants to die.

She is the only one, in more than 300 years, to choose to leave the “family” and live among humans as a human. And because she made that choice, it was the catalyst for the rest of the series. She learns that nearly everything she had ever been taught was a lie.

She learns that her family is not the only group of non-humans in the world.

And this knowledge only makes her quest to find mortality even more important in her eyes. What if one of these “new” immortal Survivors is evil? How do you kill someone who can't be killed?

A few things of note:

-Yes, there is a love triangle. But it's a necessary one. (Yes it's necessary. Read the series to find out why!)
-Yes, there are vampires. “Good” vampires – but they still feed on humans. How? Well, read the series to find out how.
-Okay, there may be some obvious parallels to Twilight – but take them with a grain of salt. The world building and character development in this series are just so phenomenal and complex that it's like comparing skim milk to whipped cream.

And perhaps the best thing I can say about this book? I finished it around 9PM. I thought to myself I can start the next one and read for an hour before bedtime. Yeahhhhh, no. Three hours later, I finished the sequel. And I was very grumpy at work the next day.

Book hangovers. Amanda Havard causes them.