A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

Title: A Shade of Vampire
Author: Bella Forrest
Series: A Shade of Vampire, #1
Source: Author for Review
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: December 14, 2012
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On the evening of Sofia Claremont's 17th 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?

I gotta say-- A Shade of Vampire really wasn't what I expected. I mean, it was, but it wasn't. For instance, I was thinking of a regular, cliched vampire novel-- but I was prepared to add this to my review list in the case that it would be the one to truly break the mold. It wasn't. It certainly can't be described as entirely cliched, but there were some instances where the author COULDN'T avoid cliche. And I accept that.

But I will feel the need to list it. The main character, Sofia, isn't afraid when she's pushed up against a wall by a newly awoken vampire that hasn't eaten in four hundred years, and she actually manages to talk him out of eating her. Good, right? But he was all set to eat her, and she's all FREAKING zen. I would be screaming bloody freaking murder.

The vamp hunters are referred to as "shadowhunters", which confused me to no end, and I wished they'd have been called something simpler, like, say, "vamp hunters". Which might offend the vampires, so maybe just "hunters".

Sofia thinks that she's hideous. Consequently, she has THREE different guys vying for her affection-- but I have to give her props. She only likes one of them, so the dreaded love triangle was avoided, thank God. But I find it suspect that these girls are always plain, but guys think they're just gorgeous. I do believe in being pretty enough that no guy ever asks you out, because they're a bit nervous, but...seriously. I have self esteem, so I like my protagonists to have self esteem. But that's just a preference!

On another note, I thought that it had a good storyline, and I was really excited to see that the vamps live in tree houses-- in giant sequoias! That part was really freaking awesome! I do wish that we'd gotten a little more description on that, but I'll live. I also liked that in the beginning, Sofia is really a very grounded girl. Even though she almost gets eaten. But she's also a contradiction-- sometimes she's very happy, and just glad to be around Derek (the vampire prince), and others she's scared to death of him. I mean, I understand. She hangs out with him a lot, she forgets that he's dangerous.

Then he unfortunately reminds her, by scaring the bejeezus out of us all. I'm going to move on to the end of this review, though. I've rambled quite a bit, honestly. While I enjoyed A Shade of Vampire, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. I do like to read books that have cliches in them occasionally, because they make me happy. Guilty pleasure, if you will. I would, HOWEVER recommend it to people who enjoy reading paranormal all the time-- and some who just like it once and a while. It was imaginative, if not necessarily breaking the mold.

And I STILL have more to say. This is going to be the longest review ever, y'all. While I didn't find that A Shade of Vampire was everything I had hoped it to be, the writing WAS fabulous, and it pulled me in from the very first page. I could not put this book down, no matter what cliches I found in it-- the author just has a terrific way with words. Even though I had it figured out before the end, I applaud the author for keeping the word building up to snuff for all of us non-paranormal readers. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us next!

I never once imagined that my life would play out the way that it did. To be fair, I guess I could say that life never really unfolds the way we expect it to. ~ Pg. 5