Saturday, April 13, 2013

[Review] A Shade of Blood by Bella Forrest

A Shade of Blood
by Bella Forrest
A Shade of Vampire #2
Published April 8th, 2013

Premise
Having been delighted by the Christmas bestselling debut, A Shade Of Vampire, readers are begging for more. In A Shade Of Blood, Bella Forrest transports you deeper into a unique, enthralling and beautifully sensitive story. Prepare to be lost in its pages...

When Sofia Claremont was kidnapped to a sunless island, uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet, she believed she'd forever be a captive of its dark ruler, Derek Novak.

Now, after months of surviving an endless night, the morning sun may soon rise again for Sofia. Something has possessed Derek's heart and he offers her a gift no human slave has ever been given in the history of his cursed island: escape.

High school, prom and a chance to move on with her life now await her.

But will she be able to forget the horrors that steal her sleep away at night? ... or the feelings that haunt her for that tormented prince of darkness?





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 Haven't read "A Shade of Vampire" yet? 
Find my review and purchase links HERE


 
I recieved a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review


My thoughts
A Shade of Blood is the second book in the A Shade of Vampire series. It's as captivating as the first book, only a little more, because now you have grown to care about the characters and everything that happens to them feels like it has happened to a dear friend of yours. You regret their bad choices along with them and mostly you want them to end up happy.

The story starts right where the first book left off, with Sofia having to make a decision between staying at The Shade with Derek or going back to her home with her best friend, Ben. She decides to go home, breaking Derek's heart and without realizing it, breaking her own too. 

Since the couple parts ways, everything starts spiriling down, right into chaos. The first half of the book revolves around the three main characters (Sophia, Derek and Ben) trying to go back to normal and Lucas running away from Derek.

This time we get to know the story not only from Sofia's and Derek's points of view, but from Ben's and Lucas too. This new insight, especially to Ben's mind, could have made me understand better this character and learn to love him too. But, somehow, it just made me dislike him even more, because now that I know his motives and how he has seen Sofia all along, I just can't agree with him. He has made so many mistakes like playing the "cool-card" around Sofia, dating all those girls just for "practice" until he feels ready to start a relationship with her, and meanwhile, having her waiting around for him, assuming he's so irresistible that she won't ever lay her eyes in someone else. I just hated that. He's so egotistic and selfish that I feel like he deserves to lose her to Derek, who was able to appreciate her from the first moment.

With Lucas, well, I think this point of view was designed to make us hate even more this character as the antagonist to our star-couple. Because he's truly pure evil, he's selfish and he's willing to say whatever he needs to in order to save himself, even if that means betraying his own family.

 With Sofia gone, Derek's life is once again full of guilt, pain and darkness and he's becoming the monster everyone but Sofia thinks he is. He starts to rebuild the Shade into what it was when he went to sleep; a community of vampire warriors. But the Elite has grown lazy and too comfortable in the island and they just want to be left alone with their slaves. So Derek has to tough it up and scare them into making his will. To make an example, he orders to capture his own brother, Lucas, because he defied him and must pay for his offense.

Meanwhile, Sofia and Ben are trying to move on and left behind what they had to endure at the Shade. But it's clear that the experience they had, affected them in different ways. Ben was abused over and over again by Claudia -his vampire captor- and that broke him inside and out in a way that could never be repaired. Sofia had some awfull experiences too, with Lucas trying to claim her as his and torturing her both pshycologically and physically. But, for her, not everything at the Shade was bad. Derek always treated her right and she made friends that had to left behind. So, where Lucas couldn't be happier to escape the island, Sofia has people to miss back there.
 
The relationship between Sofia and Ben is somewhat strained, because they can't fully understand what happened to each other back there, but they still find comfort while being together and their relationship starts to change and they start dating. The problem is that Sofia can't stop thinking about Derek and she soon will realize that even if she loves Ben, she's no longer in love with him.

The second half of the book, it's a madness of suspensfull events and revelations that would let you open-mouthed because you didn't see those turns coming. I liked it a lot better than the first half, because it was so action-packed that you spend the entire time on the edge of your seat, waiting to see what's gonna happen next.

I don't know if this time I was more picky or if this book truly had more grammar mistakes and plot holes that the first one. I am no expert in grammar since English is not my first language, but I know enough to notice some mistakes. Being able to detect writting issues I didn't see on the first book bugged me a little, because I thought really high of the writting in A Shade of Vampire, but the plot definitely makes up for any mistake.

Overall, I think this was a great sequel, which is always hard to accomplish when the first book was so good and everyone has high expectations about the second one. 

A Shade of Vampire is a series I would happily recommend to anyone who loves the Paranormal genre. The plot is really captivating and the characters are relatable. Even if there are a few issues and themes that may seem a little strong for YA readers, they are treated in a way that isn't too descriptive or explicit, so it can be read by anyone over 13-years-old. I would definitely be picking up book 3!

Rating


About the author


Bella Forrest has been telling stories pretty much since she could talk. Instead of having her parents read her bed-time stories, she would prefer to share with them her own made up tales.
As she grew older, she developed a passion for the fantasy genre. She's an incurable Potterhead.
Her debut novel, A Shade of Vampire, was released on December 14, 2012.
The book became a Number 1 Christmas Bestseller in Vampire Romance, Paranormal and Fantasy on Amazon.
If you sign up for personal email updates from her here: http://www.forrestbooks.com ,
you'll be the first to hear about her new releases.

And here are a few places you can hang out with her!: 

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