A Shade of Vampire - Bella Forrest

Release Date: December 14th, 2012
Publisher: Self-published
Age Group: Young-Adult
Pages: 147
Format: e-book
Source: Received from the author in excange for an honest review.










On the evening of Sofia Claremont's seventeenth birthday, she is sucked into a nightmare from which she cannot wake.
A quiet evening walk along a beach brings her face to face with a dangerous pale creature that craves much more than her blood. 
She is kidnapped to an island where the sun is eternally forbidden to shine.
An island uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet. She wakes here as a slave, a captive in chains. 
Sofia's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn when she is the one selected out of hundreds of girls to join the harem of Derek Novak, the dark royal Prince. 
Despite his addiction to power and obsessive thirst for her blood, Sofia soon realizes that the safest place on the island is within his quarters, and she must do all within her power to win him over if she is to survive even one more night.
Will she succeed? ...or is she destined to the same fate that all other girls have met at the hands of the Novaks?

Review:

A Shade of Vampire tells the tale of Sofia, a teenage girl, who’s taken captive on her birthday by a powerful Vampire coven. Her captor is Lucas, the brother of the Vampire Prince, Derek Novak, who’s been sleeping for a few hundred years to escape his life as a vampire. Sofia is to be one of Derek’s personal slaves once he wakes, but Lucas is a bit possessive, which leads to a lot of prickly situations.

The biggest strength “A Shade of Vampire” has is the fact that it paints a quasi-realistic image of vampires and the reaction humans should have when facing these predators: fear, horror, wanting to get as far away as possible. The love story was predictable and I’m not a big fan of vampire-love, but it was ok and if you’re a fan of this sort of thing you’ll definitely enjoy it. No insta-love here, but a growing respect and care, big thumbs up!

There was just the right amount of action to keep me flipping the pages, which is another thing I really liked about “A Shade of Vampire”. And it wasn’t the usual feeble YA-action, but real edge-of-your-seat action.

I struggled a bit with the first person POV in the first few pages, lots of facts were told to the reader in rapid succession, but it was portrayed as the main character’s thoughts. I’m not a big fan of the writing style on those first few pages, but I have to admit it grew on me and got better as the story got along.

This is a very short read (140 pages), so it’s very quick and quite enjoyable. The story is (warning: don’t hit me, I’m going to make a Twilight comparison) how Twilight should have been. I could never wrap my mind around how easy Bella accepted the fact that Edward was a vampire and nearly jumped him, even though he just wants to suck her dry. “A Shade of Vampire” is much more realistic.

Conclusion: short, enjoyable read for the vampire-love fans with a generous scoop of action and an ending that hints at something more. 

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