A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

Series: A Shade of Vampire #1
Release Date: December 14th 2012

Buy: Amazon

Goodreads summary

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?

I am not that big on vampire books, I’ve had bad experiences with them. But the reason I chose to read and review this book was because from the summary it seemed as if the female lead was actually smart and knew how to make the right choices. When I started reading this though, I questioned that. In the end, I was glad I finished the book. It is a short read and isn’t disappointing.

This book is written in dual POV, which I am happy to say works. Our female lead, Sofia, is a rather smart character. She may seem weak but she thinks things thoroughly, she questions things, like for example the prince’s interest in her; not in the insecure way but with a morbid curiosity. She also tries to face the fear, she doesn’t try to make it go away because she knows that is impossible but she stares at it in the face to let it know that it cannot weaken her. There is this one point in the beginning of the book where she asks Lucas rhetorical questions, like Why am I here? At first I almost head desked because really? That’s too cliché, and then I read what Sophia had to say, she wants to ask questions to break the silence, to help keep her fear at bay or to at least cover it up. She also remains true to herself, she doesn’t try to make herself believe otherwise, I mean even when she has revelations, it doesn’t seem like she was lying to herself and then finally admitting to otherwise but more like learning things. The author mentions that she has OCD and ADHD, I wish that was looked into a bit further, I would have liked to see how things played out that way of course she doesn’t actually have ADHD and OCD but LLI, but still .

Derek is also a rather interesting male. He has an alpha male like quality to him, I am usually bothered by that (the exceptions being Barrons and Clayton) but I think she gives an interesting twist to his alpha maleness, he has this possessiveness to him but he doesn’t always act on it, he tries to control it, so it seems kind of cute instead of creepy. Also I am also happy to say that Derek is true to himself. He ALSO questions what it is about Sophia that intrigues him. Also I like him for the fact that despite how much he cares for Sophia he isn’t willing to send his brother to the dogs right away.

“Lucas was my brother and no matter how important Sofia had become to me, blood runs thicker than water”

Derek is a four hundred year old vampire, usually in other vampire books, vampires don’t act their age (sadly), Derek doesn’t either but that’s because he isn’t that old, he has been asleep for the past several hundred years (I am assuming around 300 or so). He did it to escape because he hates the pressure of the prophecy. He isn’t afraid to admit that it was an escape. He says that even though he doesn’t want to be a vampire, the thought of dying scares him because what if there is nothing, so to escape but not have to die, he goes into a magic induced slumber (like sleeping beauty).

The romance is rather interesting , there is an insta-love feeling to it but I wouldn’t go ahead and mark it as an insta-love, but yeah. Like I mentioned before they both question Derek’s interest in her but this is how Derek explains it:

“In my eyes, she was most beautiful because at a time when she had every right to be terrified, she managed to show comfort to another person who needed it”

Despite this interest and the jump start of their relationship, there is definitely some development. At first Sophia is confused by Derek and then slowly she begins to understand him and like him, they become good friends and then somewhere along the way their feelings for each other change. Derek is powerful and he is used to giving everybody commands, even with how he feels about Sophia this doesn’t stop. He slowly realizes that even when he says that he believes humans and vampires are equal, he doesn’t actually believe it because here he is, giving orders to Sophia, looking down on her. So he slowly changes that and starts asking her permission, etc.

There isn’t much of a plot to this book. This book is more about an introduction to the world of “The Shade” and giving the series a direction. The book, however manages to stay intriguing. It didn’t take long to finish. Once you get into it, it’s rather face paced.

The one thing that bothered me from time to time was the descriptions, they got better throughout the book but right at the beginning sentences like these kind of disturbed me:

“My skin was tingling with every blow of the gentle summer breeze, the distinct scent of ocean salt filling my nostrils”

Overall this book was a really fun read and I look forward to the sequel (which I have no idea about when it’s releasing).