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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
When I started this, I honestly wasn't sure why it had such a low rating. I knew there was some controversy, but the book seemed generally fine, not necessarily bad enough to warrant the low rating. Unfortunately, the closer I got to the end of the book, the mediocrity got to me and I started becoming more and more frustrating with how predictable the book was, while also starting to dislike Kat more and more.
I picked up this book for one main reason: sapphic vampires. I've been less into the high school setting recently, though I do still love many books in this setting, and I was hoping this book would be one of those. In the end, I didn't even end up minding the high school setting, because my true letdown was romance/relationship. There was just way too much muddling it, on top of a strong air of insta-love. By the end, my indifference towards the romance turned into just straight dislike, and I don't even think I wanted Kat and Taylor to be end-game by the time I finished. I think this is largely due to the book just not spending anywhere near enough time building up this part of the book.
There was just too much fit into this book. The closer I got to the end, the more like it felt like this book needed a sequel to wrap everything properly up. Instead, all the reveals are rapid-fired at the end (though I mean, it was pretty easy to predict what these reveals would be), meaning there wasn't actually any space left in the book to fully digest and process these reveals, and what it meant for the characters and their vampire society overall. While I was actually surprised that the ending didn't feel too incredibly rushed, I feel like we lost a lot of the space to discuss the reveals and their impact, which could've made the book as a whole hit a lot harder. This book tried to tackle a lot of societal issues (both vampire-themed and things like diversity and racism), but the ending made a lot of these potential discussions disappear. I don't necessarily think this book would've been the place for most of those discussions to flourish anyway, but I would've liked a deeper look into the vampire society and the ramifications of these reveals, as well as a bit more surrounding the queer issues that this book starts to bring up.
Overall, while this book wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting from some of the bad reviews I've seen and the goodreads rating, it just wasn't all that good either unfortunately.
I picked up this book for one main reason: sapphic vampires. I've been less into the high school setting recently, though I do still love many books in this setting, and I was hoping this book would be one of those. In the end, I didn't even end up minding the high school setting, because my true letdown was romance/relationship. There was just way too much muddling it, on top of a strong air of insta-love. By the end, my indifference towards the romance turned into just straight dislike, and I don't even think I wanted Kat and Taylor to be end-game by the time I finished. I think this is largely due to the book just not spending anywhere near enough time building up this part of the book.
There was just too much fit into this book. The closer I got to the end, the more like it felt like this book needed a sequel to wrap everything properly up. Instead, all the reveals are rapid-fired at the end (though I mean, it was pretty easy to predict what these reveals would be), meaning there wasn't actually any space left in the book to fully digest and process these reveals, and what it meant for the characters and their vampire society overall. While I was actually surprised that the ending didn't feel too incredibly rushed, I feel like we lost a lot of the space to discuss the reveals and their impact, which could've made the book as a whole hit a lot harder. This book tried to tackle a lot of societal issues (both vampire-themed and things like diversity and racism), but the ending made a lot of these potential discussions disappear. I don't necessarily think this book would've been the place for most of those discussions to flourish anyway, but I would've liked a deeper look into the vampire society and the ramifications of these reveals, as well as a bit more surrounding the queer issues that this book starts to bring up.
Overall, while this book wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting from some of the bad reviews I've seen and the goodreads rating, it just wasn't all that good either unfortunately.
2.5 — it was entertaining, I liked some of the characters, and one of my students gave this to me to read after they finished it and loved it, so I can’t knock it too much. There’s some pretty active dialogue going on about some of the issues in this book that I don’t know I could necessarily add anything new to, but I picked up on as well. It’s unfortunate, because this has a lot of what I tend to like in a good YA novel, but like many novels in the genre, I think it needed to go through a much more thorough editing process.
*thank you penguin Randomhouse for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review*
Kat is one of the first generation Born Vampires but doesn’t have the luxury of being a part of the up and coming vampire community like she yearns for. Everything changes when she gets accepted and offered a full ride to the ever exclusive Harvote - the first and only Private Vampire Institute.
Taylor is starting junior year at Harcote with the same old same old issues of hating everyone there. When her roommate suddenly changes and she’s rooming with the new girl, it’s a shock. Not only childhood best friends, Kat Finn broke her first crushing heart and then disappeared without a trace years ago. And now they’re stuck together.
This story was so fun. I loved the private dorm school setting and the different take on Vampires that can be born. The mystery and suspense was fun and the sapphic relationship focus was so much fun. I had a great time reading this one and will definitely pick up from Sasha when she writes another.
Kat is one of the first generation Born Vampires but doesn’t have the luxury of being a part of the up and coming vampire community like she yearns for. Everything changes when she gets accepted and offered a full ride to the ever exclusive Harvote - the first and only Private Vampire Institute.
Taylor is starting junior year at Harcote with the same old same old issues of hating everyone there. When her roommate suddenly changes and she’s rooming with the new girl, it’s a shock. Not only childhood best friends, Kat Finn broke her first crushing heart and then disappeared without a trace years ago. And now they’re stuck together.
This story was so fun. I loved the private dorm school setting and the different take on Vampires that can be born. The mystery and suspense was fun and the sapphic relationship focus was so much fun. I had a great time reading this one and will definitely pick up from Sasha when she writes another.
L’histoire était vachement cliché et je ne me suis attachée à aucun des personnages. Les deux personnages principaux sont insupportables. Ce n’était pas une bonne lecture ce qui est dommage car j’avais de grandes attentes à propos de ce livre, j’étais vraiment heureuse de lire un livre à propos de lesbiennes traduit en français car il n’y en a pas tant que ça.
leaving this book unrated because of the problematic nature of how it discusses it's themes. i wasn't aware of these issues before picking up this book, and if i was i probably wouldn't have read it in the first place. make sure you do research and listen to queer and POC readers of this book before you consider reading it.
Had to drag myself to finish this book. No chemistry. Not enough plot to warrant the size of the book.
This is a no-spoilers review.
First off thank you to Penguin Teen for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Secondly, this novel is being marketed for fans of the vampire diaries. I have never read/watched that work, but I did watch True Blood so my vampiric frame of reference comes from that show.
If you would have asked me how I felt the first 50% of this novel I would have told you that I was absolutely engrossed in this novel and it was on its way to being a 5 star review (check my stats I don't give a ton of those out). However, while Laurens is able to set up a really interesting world, plot lines, and characters I don't feel like she knew how to sustain the intrigue/juggle all the plot lines for the length of the novel and then just wanted to wrap it up once our leads move from enemies to lovers and wrap up that trope. The back half of the novel is both boring and rushed towards the end. Like so incredibly rushed we got 5% of the total page count of the book to over throw the primary antagonist and wrap up the story with all characters attempting to have a resolution. No No give your characters a few extra pages of breathing room please!
Pros: This is teen True Blood set an elitist vampiric boarding school. Sign me up! The supporting characters were the appropriate level of "bitchy" and fun and them being sheltered lets you believe some of their actions are genuine not just "mean girl." I really loved Kat as our Main POV with Taylor being our other POV. I just didn't like Taylor as much because she came across as stubborn purposely while Kat felt genuine in her actions. The school of Harcote was well imagined and detailed. I enjoyed the descriptions and the "titled ceilings" of the girls room. It all felt so thought out and meant to "suck you in" to the world. The Hema and CFaD plot line is the beefiest ethically and the the novel does a good job of juggling big themes with the target readership being teenagers. I think Laurens never treated her readers as too dumb to understand the ethical concepts, but even if they were she has a class the students attend be an ethics class to debate the themes of the book. This was so fun! The novel is at its best when it is not taking itself WAY to seriously, but instead walks the line.
The mediocore but not bad: The mean girls of Evangaline and Lucy were interesting and more fleshed out than average supporting characters. Evangaline has a nice arc about using Taylor to discover her sexuality and how by the end she realizes how wrong she has been to use a person to do this and becomes a better person. Lucy doesn't get the same closure, but provides a good bit of the ethical dilemmas Kat must struggle with in the early half of the novel.
The Bad: There are two main gripes I have. First off is Galen throughout is the most annoying and unsympathetic character and we are forced to spend so much time with him, but in a way where he feels forced. I never liked him and Kat spends a ton of time with him and not only that she spends the time with him begrudgingly so she doesn’t want to be there and I surely don’t want to be there, but here we are spending a good chunk of the book with interactions between them and a forced relationship between the two (as though there was really enough of a build up). That is the big issue with the book that is my second issue, it has SO MUCH it is trying to do that some of the plot lines just wither and don’t have enough “meat” to justify the events of the book. The revel of the main villain was super obvious, but not because the book made it obvious, the book said almost nothing and it was like “yeah who else would it be?” we have spent the whole book with barely any development for some of these characters, but at least they were introduced so it has got to be them!
The ending is so rushed that its borderline whiplash. I have no idea why we spent hundreds of pages on a slow burn will they won’t they romance just for the whole book to wrap in like 20 pages.
Overall – I really loved this novel and want it to succeed. Sometimes when you read an ARC you just want everyone too, but the book isn’t out yet so I really hope this book finds an audience as I think it has a lot of potential. It is fine as a standalone, but this is one of those moments were I wish it was a duology as it would have allowed the book to breathe without the rushed ending.
First off thank you to Penguin Teen for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Secondly, this novel is being marketed for fans of the vampire diaries. I have never read/watched that work, but I did watch True Blood so my vampiric frame of reference comes from that show.
If you would have asked me how I felt the first 50% of this novel I would have told you that I was absolutely engrossed in this novel and it was on its way to being a 5 star review (check my stats I don't give a ton of those out). However, while Laurens is able to set up a really interesting world, plot lines, and characters I don't feel like she knew how to sustain the intrigue/juggle all the plot lines for the length of the novel and then just wanted to wrap it up once our leads move from enemies to lovers and wrap up that trope. The back half of the novel is both boring and rushed towards the end. Like so incredibly rushed we got 5% of the total page count of the book to over throw the primary antagonist and wrap up the story with all characters attempting to have a resolution. No No give your characters a few extra pages of breathing room please!
Pros: This is teen True Blood set an elitist vampiric boarding school. Sign me up! The supporting characters were the appropriate level of "bitchy" and fun and them being sheltered lets you believe some of their actions are genuine not just "mean girl." I really loved Kat as our Main POV with Taylor being our other POV. I just didn't like Taylor as much because she came across as stubborn purposely while Kat felt genuine in her actions. The school of Harcote was well imagined and detailed. I enjoyed the descriptions and the "titled ceilings" of the girls room. It all felt so thought out and meant to "suck you in" to the world. The Hema and CFaD plot line is the beefiest ethically and the the novel does a good job of juggling big themes with the target readership being teenagers. I think Laurens never treated her readers as too dumb to understand the ethical concepts, but even if they were she has a class the students attend be an ethics class to debate the themes of the book. This was so fun! The novel is at its best when it is not taking itself WAY to seriously, but instead walks the line.
The mediocore but not bad: The mean girls of Evangaline and Lucy were interesting and more fleshed out than average supporting characters. Evangaline has a nice arc about using Taylor to discover her sexuality and how by the end she realizes how wrong she has been to use a person to do this and becomes a better person. Lucy doesn't get the same closure, but provides a good bit of the ethical dilemmas Kat must struggle with in the early half of the novel.
The Bad: There are two main gripes I have. First off is Galen throughout is the most annoying and unsympathetic character and we are forced to spend so much time with him, but in a way where he feels forced. I never liked him and Kat spends a ton of time with him and not only that she spends the time with him begrudgingly so she doesn’t want to be there and I surely don’t want to be there, but here we are spending a good chunk of the book with interactions between them and a forced relationship between the two (as though there was really enough of a build up). That is the big issue with the book that is my second issue, it has SO MUCH it is trying to do that some of the plot lines just wither and don’t have enough “meat” to justify the events of the book. The revel of the main villain was super obvious, but not because the book made it obvious, the book said almost nothing and it was like “yeah who else would it be?” we have spent the whole book with barely any development for some of these characters, but at least they were introduced so it has got to be them!
The ending is so rushed that its borderline whiplash. I have no idea why we spent hundreds of pages on a slow burn will they won’t they romance just for the whole book to wrap in like 20 pages.
Overall – I really loved this novel and want it to succeed. Sometimes when you read an ARC you just want everyone too, but the book isn’t out yet so I really hope this book finds an audience as I think it has a lot of potential. It is fine as a standalone, but this is one of those moments were I wish it was a duology as it would have allowed the book to breathe without the rushed ending.
adventurous
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
the author says in the end note that she’d never read / seen any vampire media before writing this… and it shows :-/
i picked this up because, as a lesbian who loves vampires enough to have an entire shelf dedicated to vampire books, i was excited to add a teen lesbian vampire novel to the shelf. i was severely disappointed.
this did not need to be a vampire book. the vampires were so un-vampire-like that i forgot that they weren’t human every now and then. i joked with my friends that it felt like a genderbent carry on, and now that i think about it you literally could have made the characters wizards / witches instead of vampires and little would have changed. the vampireness of the entire book felt like an afterthought, a coat of vampire paint shoddily slapped over a non vampire book, and the bottom layer is bleeding through.
in general i don’t think the author understood what makes vampires appealing / interesting characters in the first place…
other than that the plot was just so… fine. it was SO mediocre. if it weren’t for the pointlessness of the vampire stuff it probably would have been a 2.5 that i rounded up to a 3, but alas.
i picked this up because, as a lesbian who loves vampires enough to have an entire shelf dedicated to vampire books, i was excited to add a teen lesbian vampire novel to the shelf. i was severely disappointed.
this did not need to be a vampire book. the vampires were so un-vampire-like that i forgot that they weren’t human every now and then. i joked with my friends that it felt like a genderbent carry on, and now that i think about it you literally could have made the characters wizards / witches instead of vampires and little would have changed. the vampireness of the entire book felt like an afterthought, a coat of vampire paint shoddily slapped over a non vampire book, and the bottom layer is bleeding through.
in general i don’t think the author understood what makes vampires appealing / interesting characters in the first place…
other than that the plot was just so… fine. it was SO mediocre. if it weren’t for the pointlessness of the vampire stuff it probably would have been a 2.5 that i rounded up to a 3, but alas.
3.5 Escuela elitista de Vampiros, un friends to enemies to... vampiros adolescentes, una vampireza lesbiana e incomprendida en medio de un grupo que vive por la falsa nostalgia de la figura del vampiro, una sociedad vampírica que pasa por una crisis alimenticia, ya dije que este libro tiene vampiros?
Ya en serio, este libro fue bastante ligero, al mismo tiempo que ambicioso (la pregunta es si logra cumplir con tales ambiciones, desde mi perspectiva, si pero a medias), lo resumiría como entretenido de principio a fin, perfecto para pasar un buen rato, pero nada tan trascendental XD
Ya en serio, este libro fue bastante ligero, al mismo tiempo que ambicioso (la pregunta es si logra cumplir con tales ambiciones, desde mi perspectiva, si pero a medias), lo resumiría como entretenido de principio a fin, perfecto para pasar un buen rato, pero nada tan trascendental XD