As someone who is a massive fan of vampires, this book should have really worked for me but it really, really didn’t.

I had so many issues with this book but I will start by saying that this book reads very much like a tropey YA novel and I just don’t think I am really the intended audience for this book. I can imagine this book to be pretty popular and well-enjoyed by readers either in or closer to the YA target age range.

This book definitely fits squarely within the romantasy genre with an urban fantasy setting (more on that in a bit) with the romance between Emelia and Kyle very much at the forefront of the story. Unfortunately for this book, because the romance is the primary plot, as a reader you need to really get behind it but I felt as though the story kinda skipped a step as these characters went from not liking one another but maybe being mildly attracted to just absolutely obsessed. This instalove / instalust situation meant that I didn’t find the romance believable and Kyle’s ultimate betrayal was something that I felt like I was just waiting to happen.

A little on the setting of this book… Something felt a bit off about the world that this book was set in. I think this book is set in contemporary England as there are phones and internet but the story was also vague enough that I couldn’t really place the where or the when. It felt distracting trying to work out where this story was taking place and the tone of the story felt as though it wanted to take place in a time pre-technology but then how would Emelia conveniently Google for the answers to all of her questions?

Emelia was a really challenging character for me to follow. She is 17-years-old and incredibly spoiled, sheltered, and privileged. Whilst I can understand that being a human in a world of vampires would make Emelia feel as though she didn’t belong, it was really hard to read about this character that has the world handed to her on a platter and she just didn’t want any of it. Her perspective was additionally challenging because it was apparent almost immediately that humans are treated like livestock and yet she just doesn’t see it and wants to cosplay as being just another human. She was so unselfaware and whining that I really hated being in her head. 

There were a lot of moments that was pretty heavily telegraphed and I hated how unsubtle it was like the fact that Michael was the bad guy’s son (I had guessed that he was a vampire because he is never mentioned without it being pointed-out that he smells of violets) and that Kyle was going to betray Emelia. And yet, when Emelia kills Kyle towards the end of the story, it kinda feels like it comes out of nowhere. In the scene, there is a logic to what she does but also Emelia killing someone feels like a 0 to 100 sort of event as well as the fact that she was supposedly madly in love with him just a day or two before… Oh, also, can we please retire the trope of girl has sex for the first time and then the guy she has sex with turns out to be the villain, it is so problematic and gross.

I am sure there were other issues that I had with this book but ultimately it didn’t hit in the way that I had hoped and I felt as though the story didn’t really go anywhere interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t see myself continuing this series. For all of my grievances, I do think that there is a readership out there for this book but I am very definitely am not that reader.