I really enjoyed the way the mystery of the book was revealed slowly through the main character Ellen Reading her ancestor's diaries. It allowed the story and the characters to be revealed at a steady pace. The use of Ellen's illness managed to create a sense of anticipation for the next clue. Overall the story was quite tame for a vampire tale. While I like the characters and the relationship between Ellen and Her grandmother, the relationship between Ellen and Andy could've used more depth And more intensity. I also really liked the character of nurse Jenny and appreciated her role in the end chapters but felt that the Swiftness with which Ellen and Andy trusted her and reveal their secrets and the ease with which Jenny accepted their story and willingly took on such great risk required more suspension of disbelief than this reader could muster.

The cover art on this book was what grabbed my interest and it having a 'mature read' sticker from the Scholastic book fair let me to believe that it was going to be a deeper more intense and more intricate story and it actually turned out to be. Overall this was a satisfactory book for younger YA readers who may be interested in vampire mystery but who are not looking for the intensity or violence and gore that is common in this genre. ( )

Boring, badly written book about vampires. ( )

i enjoyed it a lot, but I found that there were some parts in the book that do not get explained in the end. ( )

Sent to rest at her grandmother's house, the diary that Ellen finds is at first just a diversion. However, the history that unfolds from the diary is strangely linked to her own life.
Ellen begins to feel weaker than ever, could something be reaching across the centuries to claim her? ( )

Occasionally, when trawling through ex-library book sales you can find a real gem -- this is one of them. I read it expecting a trashy teenage horror novel, and got an engaging mystery thriller instead.

The only let-down to this book, was one of the final chapters, where you just know that something fantastically gruesome is supposed to occur, but instead the main protagonist is finished off in a rather hasty and slipshod manner. An editor worried about impressionable young minds, or a fault of the writer -- who can say. ( )