e-ARC, 464 pages
Release Date: August 29, 2023
Published by: Entangled Teen
Read from: August 15-September 4, 2023
Series (Forthcoming info on it is unknown)
Source: Edelweiss (I received an early copy of this book from the publisher. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Death, Gore, Self Harm, Blood, Death of a parent, Child Abuse, Grief
For Readers Interested In: Vampires, Slayers, Paranormal Romance, Weird Relationships, Racial/Ethnic Diversity, Dual POV, YAFull Metal Alchemist meets Vampire Diaries in this fun and clever dark academia series…
High school is supposed to be about studying, socializing, and marching-band practice. Not fighting vampires. Then one night flipped my world inside out―now, my life sucks. But it isn’t all bad. I’m at a slayer academy, learning things like the real origin of vamps and how to make serious weapons out of thin air.
Every last one of them will pay for what they did. I’m doing great.
Until I come face-to-face with the actual vampire prince…and I’m not sure of anything anymore. Vampires are supposed to be soul-sucking demons. But Khamari is…something else. He’s intelligent and reasonable―and he seems to know things about me that could change everything.
He’s also hiding something big, even from his own kind. And when a threat from an ancient evil is so extreme that a vamp.
*MY THOUGHTS*
I was hella hesitant on this one because I haven’t really liked vampires at all since Twilight. After it came out they were SO OVER DONE and I didn’t even want to hear the word anymore. But now that there’s some coming out with people that look like me?! Oh please believe, I don’t care what the paranormal creature is, I’m most definitely going to read it. And I’m going to enjoy the f out of it. Just like I did with this one.
Ok so the thing that caught my attention with this one was the fact that it’s set in Texas. I didn’t care about anything else after that, I was already hooked. BUT THEN I read that she was also in the band. I was like 3% in and I already related so hard to her lol But as it turns out, that was really the only thing we had in common. As it turned out, she was annoying af and she didn’t want to listen to anyone, just wanted everyone to cater to her. And she was trying to keep so much of herself away from people ever knowing anything about her, just expected them to fall in line. It didn’t make sense to me. But what made it worse, they did exactly as she asked. She did one cool thing and took on the big scary thing in gym class and everyone was falling over themselves to get to her. Idk, sis didn’t convince me she was the real deal. And like, everyone immediately just started telling her secrets? They had no sense of government lol
Even though I didn’t like her, the rest of the book was a breeze to get through. I found myself using the Alexa hack when i needed to read and do things at the same time. I was INVESTED. I was rolling my eyes about her the whole time, but I couldn’t stop reading! And then when the actual fighting started happening? I was doing the moves in my living room! Lol It was so weird. I’m a character driven reader, so it was so surprising that I hated the FMC but still fell in love with everything else. I guess the plot moved fast enough and the school was cool enough for me to be and stay interested in everything else.
Now Khamari…… Whew! He was…. I don’t even know how to explain it. He was way too smooth and I don’t think Raven was ready for it either. She was still too busy learning about the world and learning that there are vampires and the way they are in the world and their relationship with slayers. And then when information about him starts surfacing, she realizes that things are a lot more different than she thought. I was hella intrigued by their romance too. Who wouldn’t be? A vampire and a slayer?! Yes, please. But so many things got in their way and I hated that for them .
The reason I rated this what I did, I would have liked a bit more world-building. Like some explanations on how and why these things are happening to her now? Because things were just happening and I had no idea why. It wasn’t terrible, but it made me make some assumptions and I don’t like that. If it’s going to be a part of your story, why not tell us why? And the ending? When things started clicking for them both at the end? Why didn’t anyone elaborate or tell us what was happening. Was it real? I need to know? For now, I’m just going to make a note of it and wait for the next book. Hopefully we get down there. Because I had too many unanswered questions with just this one.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a vampire book, but I thought this one was a great one to ease back into them with. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun. Hopefully we get a second book and we get more and some answers. Because I’m in desperate need of both.
Overall, I give this
