A Shade of Vampire

A Shade of Vampire, by Bella Forrest.

There was no way to predict what would happen to me after that night.

During her better days, my mother already warned me about this. She said that I should expect life to dish out my own fair share of surprises.

But Derek Novak was a surprise that was far from fair ...

A Shade of Vampire is the first in a new series by Bella Forrest, the second of which will be titled A Shade of Blood. I received an e-copy of this book to review, and it's only about 150 pages; I whipped through it in about one to two hours.

ASOV is pretty much like the Twilight series on crack, if that makes any sense. Same types of situations, but the human girl is with the vampire against her will, at least at first.

This (official) synopsis might make more sense:
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?
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So at the beginning of the story, like any normal person, Sofia wants to escape. Derek's brother Lucas almost rapes/takes advantage of her, except that his sister intervenes, saying that Sofia is to be a part of Derek's harem.

("Derek Novak," by the way, sounds more like a basketball player's name than a vampire's!)

Derek has been asleep for many years - 400-500, actually - and he wakes up and ends up having a connection of sorts to Sofia, declaring she is to be his personal slave. What happens after that, though, is kind of surprising: he ends up truly liking her, actually falling in love with her, and (like Edward in Twilight), has to control himself every night so as to not to drink her blood. Sofia appreciates these kindnesses and in turn begins falling for him as well. At the end of this novella, she has to choose whether she wants to leave the island and go back to her old life, or stay there with Derek.

This book kind of reminded me of the Abandon series by Meg Cabot, especially in the second book, where the main character (SEMI-SPOILER) has to stay in the Underworld with John; she doesn't have a choice. What's interesting here, though, is that at first Sofia is considered a "human slave," but near the end of the book, Derek is treating her pretty much like an equal.

The morals and whatnot in this book are a bit crazy - staying with Derek probably means Sofia has Stockholm Syndrome or something - but I can't help wanting to know what happens next in their story.

4 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel from the author to review. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.
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*The author has requested I share these links:
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