4 ½ Stars

Blood Before Sunrise starts couple of months after the events in Shaedes of Gray. Darian and Raif have been searching for months for the Oracle, Delilah. When they finally find her her mind is not as once was, she is talking so much nonsense that is difficult to understand what she is really saying, but in one of her ramblings she says that Raif daughter, Brakae is not dead. Raif doesn’t want to hear anything about it; he has suffered for Brakae’s disappearance for years and won’t believe a crazy maniacal Oracle. But something in Darian tells her Delilah is telling the truth.
Raif is her best friend, the man she loves like a brother. Darian knows how much he has suffered because of the disappearance of his daughter, for that reason she wants to find her for him and sets her mind in finding Brakae.

Reading some books is like taking a ride in a roller coaster of emotions. Reading Blood Before Sunrise is like taking a ride in the first row of that roller coaster. This book grabs you from page one to the end without letting you go, not even to take a breath, be ready to swoon, laugh and almost cry. You heart will rise and hurt and you will experience every feeling in between. Mrs. Bonilla’s writing is so good and vivid that she will make you experience this and more with her words.

Darian has come a long way since we met her in Shaedes of Grey. She is learning to live a life where she is not alone, where she has people that care for her and she can count with them. She has Tyler who loves her unconditionally and is willing to die for her, Raif who is more than a brother to her and even Xander who publicly admires her and covets her.
But getting there has not been an easy road. All this is new to her and sometimes she just doesn’t know how to do it. She doesn’t know how to trust others or how to ask for help when she needs it. This places her in difficult situations where not only her life is in peril but also her relationships strain because of her trusting issues.
Darian made many mistakes and makes same amount of bad decisions in this book, sometimes it was painful to watch, it was almost as watching a train wreck in slow motion, you know is coming but there is nothing you can do to stop it. I would have preferred for her to make better decisions (my heart would have suffered a lot less) but at the same time that was just what she needed to learn from her mistakes and become a better person.
We also learn more about her past, about her human life and the time she shared with Azriel. From those glimpses we learn something that it may affect her in the future.

My heart broke for Tyler in this book, I know how much he loves Darian and everything he has done for her. Seeing him suffer in this book was not easy, I understood that his behavior was something completely out of his control and it pained me to see him like that.
I know Darian loves him but I wish she would have been trust-worthier with him, if somebody deserves her entire trust is Tyler.

Raif was more in Darian’s thoughts than in the pages but still we see how good he is and how much he loves Darian. For him Darian is much more than a simple friend, their relationship has progressed a lot and slowly they have become family.

We see some of Xander, he is still the self-assured leader of the Shaedes and his interest in Darian hasn’t diminished one bit. I really wonder about his real intentions towards Darian. Is it only an attraction? Is it one of those cases where you want what you can’t have? Or does he really have feelings for her? I hope Mrs. Bonilla will answer some of my questions in future books.

The villain in this book is bad and creepy and scary. He is one of those characters that really believe his craziness making him even more dangerous. He is a fanatic of his beliefs and in his head he has the right to do what he does. Mrs. Bonilla writes him so good that even though you wish him a slow and painful death you can help but sympathize with him and his “cause”.

We meet new characters in this book, some I would love to see more in future books like Moira. We also learn more about recurring characters, but still there is a lot to be discovered. Mrs. Bonilla has created in her Shaede Assassin Series a unique and extraordinary world very rich in mythology, with compelling and complex characters and a very well written plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. Mrs. Bonilla also does a great job recounting events of previous book without being repetitive; this helped me a lot because I had forgotten a lot of what happened in Shaedes of Grey.
The end broke my heart in thousand shards, it was what was needed but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Have tissues close by, you may need them.

All in all Blood Before Sunrise is a Great addition to a Great series and a book I recommend to all Urban Fantasy lovers. If you love this genre this book and this series are a Must Read for you. If you haven’t read Shaedes of Grey… What are you waiting for? You need to read it today! I recommend you to read them in order to get the whole effect of the magic world Mrs. Bonilla has created for us.
I’m really looking forward to March of next year to the release of the next installment of this series, Crave the Darkness. ( )

In the first book the Heroine had a niavete that was understandable. It fit the charachter because she was kept in the dark about a lot of information. In this book it just feels like she has no common sense. She does not stop and ask questions. She has resources she could use but ignores them. It is as this book was written by a male and I'm male. There is no regard for the growth and maturing of the charachter. ( )

The world building in BLOOD BEFORE SUNRISE gets kicked up a notch as the story take us to the Fae side of the world and provides us with a whole new landscape to get to know. Darian also learns more about why she is different then the other Shaedes.

Darian did not have a good time during BLOOD BEFORE SUNRISE. Darian's decision making reverted back to her doing what she felt was right instead of trusting those around her to help her when she needed it which made some situations she found herself in worse then they could have been. She is extremely loyal to her friendship with Raif but it causes a huge problem with her love Tyler. Some crazy magic is going on that makes it all worse but lets say it was crazy and frustrating and all around heartbreaking to have to witness.

There is a great deal of action, I don't think it was as much as book 1 but there were plenty of stressful situations thrown into the mix. The ending was both heartwarming and heartbreaking and Im dying to see more of the fallout of Darian's actions. BLOOD BEFORE SUNRISE is a must read for fans of the Shaede Assassin series. ( )

I am a huge fan of Amanda Bonilla, and it's really not just her writing that I love. She is one of those authors who is very accessible to readers and I love that about her. But her writing is really awesome too. I really loved the first book in the series, and I really enjoyed the novella (seriously if authors keep putting out these great novellas I'm going to have to rethink my anti-novella stance). So I have been waiting for book two and it finally arrived. I was very curious to see what was going to happen to Darian now that the big battle from book 1 was over.

The plot of the book was not exactly what I was expecting. Shaedes of Gray was very much a book where the plot action based and you had this feeling when you were reading it that the stakes couldn't get any higher. I did not get that feeling from BBS. For me this entire book is so character driven, although there is plenty of action scenes, and when you finally find out what is really going on you realize the stakes are pretty high), but mostly it's so about the characters.

Darian is still finding her way as this new "changed" being that the events of book one left her in. She has also found herself in a relationship with Tyler who she does truly love, but after not letting anyone close to her in 100 years there are certainly some growing pains that need to be worked out. It also doesn't help that someone is clearly messing with Tyler's bond to her and it's make their situation all the more tense.

Raif is such a great character, and you really get to see how much Darian loves him. He has become really like family to her, Bonilla refers to him as a brother type love, but he kind of feels like a cross between brother and father type figure. He has done so much for her so of course she wants to do anything she can for him, like help find his daughter. By the time the book ends I love Raif all the more, and I am so glad that Darian has him to lean on.

My one complaint is that I would have loved to actually see more Xander in the book. He is referred to a lot, and has a few scenes, but generally speaking I missed his whole high and mighty routine/trying to convince Darian to be with him.

Overall I really enjoyed the book. Like I said it is super character driven, and you get to meet some new ones along the way, but you also get to know the old ones a lot better. At the end of the book I really felt like the whole theme was about love, and so many different kinds of love are included in this book. And the ending was so bittersweet, it really made me want to know where everyone was going to go from here. If I had to pick I think the first book is still my favorite, but only by a hair, this is a great follow up book and I would recommend it to anyone (but read the first one too!). ( )

Reviewed by: Rabid Reads

Shaedes of Gray made my top 5 fav books of 2011 list and as a result, I've been anxiously awaiting the release of Blood Before Sunrise ever since. In this installment, Bonilla continues to expand upon her Shaede Assassin universe which is an impressive feat in itself considering she already did this the first time around. Apparently, Amanda's imagination and creativity knows no bounds because Darian is back in full force and the ride is wilder than ever. Aside from the extraordinary world building, this story is uplifting, heartbreaking, eye opening and just plain shocking. As for the ending... don't even get me started!

The story picks up right where it left off and Darian finds herself in the eye of the storm. There are battles being waged all around her which means that there's no lack of action but she does have to prioritize in which order to fight them. In Shaedes of Gray Darian's world gets turned upside down when she learns that she's not the last of her kind. In Blood Before Sunrise it happens all over again again except this time it's Faerie that makes its presence known. I really enjoyed watching some of the lose ends left over from the first installment come into play and propel the story forward. It's rare for me to love an author's world as much as her characters but in this instance I find myself enamored by both.

Ooh Darian, where do I even begin? I understand that she's just had the proverbial rug pulled out from under her but talk about frustrating. I just wanted to strangle her! Over and over again! Her decisions are questionable but if you take her past into consideration they then become understandable. As Amanda kindly pointed out to me: "This book is her hitting bottom". The good thing about bottoming out is the fact that you can only go up from there and Darian does exactly that. She learns from her mistakes (the hard way), grows and then becomes a better person as a result. This is character development at its best.

Darian's commitment to her friendship with Raif is admirable and her love for Tyler is limitless but when the two men in her life end up at odds all hell breaks lose. This is when a few of her "questionable decisions" really come into play. In my eyes, the right call was obvious from the get-go but Darian likes to do things the hard way. I personally think that she chose wrong but then again, I guess that's how we learn, from our mistakes. I understand why the book ended the way that it did but that doesn't mean that I have to like it!

Blood Before Sunrise delivers a one-of-a-kind story with as many highs as there are lows; in other words, it'll rock your world! ( )