When you finish a book in one day, you know it has left you breathless. I won this book on booklikes, and I wanted to give it a try, since it's here, and I wasn't disappointed at all.

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When you finish a book in one day, you know it has left you breathless. I won this book on booklikes, and I wanted to give it a try, since it's here, and I wasn't disappointed at all. ( )

Firstly, I will blurt out the major quip I personally had about this book: I hate Maura's mom. She is a manipulative hypocrite that one minute is swooning her perfect body with rich guys at her job and then the instant she comes home, she uses emotional blackmail to her reclusive and socially awkward daughter Maura that has yet to gain sufficient personal insight to cut the umbilical cord and live her own life.

Okay, so Maura's mom just doesn't want her daughter to become a teen mom like she did, but later on in the story she confesses that she became enamored with her father who seemed like an older guy that sometimes went to her family's restaurant and she lied about her age with the sole purpose to seduce him. Yup, that sure compensantes for the tireless scenes of her relentlessly grounding her daughter even for minor attempts to go to the movies with people from her highschool and then forbidding her to even think about starting a romance with the well-intentioned Ron that seems to genuinely like Maura.

To add salt to the horrid helicopter parenting, Maura expectedly grew up miserable in their small town and she was easily coaxed by the stereotypical bad guy preppy cheerleaders of her school to swim with them where their horrid prank almost had her killed when in an attempt to retrieve the clothes they snatched from her, she falls on the water and hits her head against a rock. Now, I don't condone the attempted manslaughter from the teens, but I didn't ever get to hate them like I detest Maura's mom. They were stupid and probably didn't think she could have ended up gang raped walking in her underwear in a dangerous industrial part of town. Maura has been coddled for so long that she never learned any street smarts to get any true perspective which is indeed terrifying.

Luckily for her, she was rescued by Ron who was (conveniently on purpose just to make sure she would be ok) camping with his friend Shane nearby. He's two years older and about to graduate highschool and was always infatuated with her but he never had the courage to even say hello to her all of these years. Now that she is going to move to Canada in a few weeks, it seems like this buddling romance will be due for failure.

After the mom expectedly freaks out after seeing her daughter lied to her about going out with the school bullies and show up half naked with blood dripping from her head (not to mentioned she arrived home late in the arms of two strange teenage guys she never met before), she limits her daughter's freedom like psycho crazy but Ron doesn't give up. He seems to be growing attached to the troubled and lonely girl and puts up with the mom's horrid conditions on one hand but on the other hand skipping class with Maura prompting her to lie to her mom over and over. It seems clear at this point that Maura and Ron want to get serious but the move is going to ruin everything. They will make attempts at a long distance relationship, but Maura's severe lack of real life experience and severe gullibility might make her suffer...

If things weren't complicated enough (mostly due to her mom), Maura is suffering some minor changes to her body that everyone claims is just a part of being a teenager. She was always skinny and pasty pale, but her hair is getting fuller and glossy, her canine teeth look hollow on dental x-rays and she has started to enjoy eating a protein rich diet with extra raw beef steaks. She seems to ignore the changes for a while, but after discovering her mother has been lying to her... a lot, she starts to suspects something is wrong with her and tries to find the answer. The reader obviously knows everything from the start, but it's still fun seeing how a naive to the degree of ridiculousness teenager discovers everything on her own.

I personally like the romance aspect of this story. Ron seems like an interesting guy and he tries to stay in Maura's life despite the odds. Maura seems to start to get some real life experience in the few months that pass in this novel. In a way I am probably being very harsh with her because she doesn't seem to have any other family, her father left them before she was born and she is an only child that was severely deprived of human interaction that wasn't aided with her mother's horrid parenting. I sometimes forget that Maura is barely 16 years old during this story and she seems to behave adequately as a terrified prisoner of her life circumstances.

While I personally have doubts about her future with Ron due to the things that develop later in the story, I hope that if things go south, that she grows up fast, finds her own way in life and ditches her mom. I like her as a character and if she does show some serious character growth in the subsequent novels, I might give them a try. ( )

3 SOLID STARS

I'm currently harboring really mixed feelings about this book, well to be honest, i'm slightly disappointed, I didn't downright love it, but I still enjoyed it nevertheless.

I already had an ideas of the story before reading it however while doing so I was kind of confused of the outcome.

I was like " this should be about bloodsuckers and mainly blood but it's not, and essentially it left me asking (what's the point when the action in this one is minimum?!)"

well, from what I could understand, the first installment is this trilogy is only an introduction to Mauras life and how she developed throughout the story, which is kind of impressive.
because, instead of jumping directly in the story and then explain Maura's life in flash backs and fill-in-the-gap thoughts, she actually lay it all out in her first book.

I truly appreciate the authors efforts, the story, the details, the characters... for a debut it's great

by the way I loved maura's mom (not at first) but she did grow on me, however Maura was getting on my nerves constantly.
her state of denial was mindblowing, like WHAT! and I think I broke my eyes due to my excessive eyerolling, my screams of frustration could be heard from a mile away.
"THAT'S HOW ANNOYED I AM WITH HER!"

now that I got that out of my chest, let's dicuss the ending.
while it was obvious I did not mind and I kind of liked it, because let's be real this is a CLASSICAL vampire novel what did you expect reviewers?!

Overall I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this read and I hope I'll get to the next one soon. ( )

Maura DeLuca is coming to the end of her Junior year of high school. Most of her high school career has been uneventful, with no real friends, Maura spends most of her time with her single and very overprotective mother, Caelyn. That is until, Caelyn informs Maura that they will be moving to Vancouver, Canada at the end of the school year. Once news of Maura's departure spreads, many of the popular kids want to invite Maura out suddenly. When Maura's encounter with the popular crowd turns sour, Maura discovers an anger inside her. Along with it she notices strange changes, something is happening to her teeth, her hair won't stop growing, her aversion to the sun seems worse and she has a craving for raw, bloody, meat. The one good thing that came out of her Junior year is a new boyfriend, Ron. Ron is perfect in every way. He is understanding of Maura's changes, and Caelyn even approves, too bad Maura is moving away in a few weeks. Maybe she'll use the time to figure out what is wrong with her.

This was an interesting YA paranormal read. It does fall into many of the same patterns as some other YA paranormal, but is still engaging. The first part really grabbed me, Maura seemed like a kindred spirit that I could easily relate to. The writing easily conveyed Maura's emotional struggle as she dealt with school bullies, her mother's rules and the changes going on within her. The romance with Ron is really sweet and easy, I hope something more develops there. It also seems that Ron may know more about Maura then she does herself, maybe he is hiding a secret, too. The one thing that bothered me throughout the book is that once Maura caught on that something was different about herself, her mother did not do a great job reassuring her or just plain telling her what it was. It is painfully obvious to the reader what is different about Maura, it is also obvious that her mother knows what is happening, but she almost waits until it is too late to reveal it to Maura. Also,the pacing in the second half of the book, after Maura moves to Vancouver, is a little slow. The second part alternates between Maura trying to figure out what is wrong with her and missing Ron. The ending is slightly abrupt as it is revealed to Maura what she truly is; however I still look forward to the next installment to see what Maura does with this knowledge.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. ( )