I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I have always had a thing for vampire books. One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was that the main character was male. Most time it is a female. There are a lot of characters that kind of come at you all at once. Dillon is away from his father for the first time and goes off to an elite school and meets people that could become his chosen family. It was not the best vampire academy book but I do what to see what happens next to Dillon.

I received this book as an ARC. I am going to start with this book was not what I was expecting it to be.

This book had a more young adult feel. This was not well written. It is just another supernatural book that has no plot. Almost all the supernatural vamps are beautiful, stuck-up, and full of teenage sexual themes. I like that these vampires are very vicious compared to other books with the same tones. This is a book I enjoyed but won't read again. I will be looking out for any more books in this series because I do want to still read but this to me was not a book I would line up overnight at Barnes and Noble for.

"Vamps: Fresh Blood" by Nicole Arend is an interesting and compelling read! The setting is great! The world that the author has created feels new and unique. I enjoyed reading the author's descriptions of the location of the VAMPS Academy and its architecture as well as the ski trip. The characters were fun to read about and it was interesting to see how they interacted with each other and the people around them. Friendship, anger, betrayal, and loyalty! The characters: Dillon, Sade, Bram, and Celeste felt especially three-dimensional and I'm looking forward to learning more about them and other characters in future books. I liked the pacing of the plot and the author's writing style. Readers who are interested in vampires, dark academia, or stories with lots of mystery and dramatic characters will enjoy this. I really enjoyed reading this book! Thank you very much to the author Nicole Arend, the publisher Atria Books, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy to read and review honestly.

I feel like we are at a power struggle in the vampire YA world of trying to replicate what made the early 00s a paranormal powerhouse while also trying to be fresh, modern and conscientious. VAMPs, sadly, is a product of this struggle and falls flat on some of the key features needed to keep a newer audience enthralled.

This was awesome!
I loved the new world created here, and the interesting relationships between the students.
My only issue is that this ends a little open and me thinks there will be a series developed from this.
I don't normally grab books in unfinished series (or I try at least) and there was nothing alluding to this becoming a series.
That said, I will definitely read any other books she decides to write in this world!
Much love to NetGalley & Atria Books for my ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

CW: blood, gore, violence, attempted murder, murder, blood play

This was a fun and fast paced new adult paranormal book. The location was fun (now I want to vacation in the alps) and I appreciated that all of the characters were queer. I kept turning the page to figure out what was going to happen to Dillon. Low-angst but action driven, I rally enjoyed just how readable this book was.

Curious to see what happens in the next book.

Steam: 2.75

Horny young vampires coming into their own.

Lets be real, you don’t pick up a book called VAMPS Fresh Blood and expect “the next great American novel” what you do expect is a fun campy romp through the lives of teen vampires.

With this book that is exactly what you get, the premise immediately makes you think of Vampire Academy, a half human Dhampir is in over their head at vampire school while outside nefarious forces plot their demise for some mysterious reason. This book makes our naïve wide-eyed Dhampir a male named Dillon who hails from Ireland and has a mysterious mother who abandoned him as a baby for his safety.

Right of the bat we are introduced to like 90% of the characters that will be in the book and it’s confusing, it was really hard to keep track of who was who. The rest of the book reads like a horny Harry Potter, there’s head boys and girls (VE in the books lingo) blood sports and challenges, lessons, meal time bonding (over bags of blood) oh and everyone is hooking up, all of the “pure blood” vamps have no qualms when it comes to their sexuality much to the surprise of the half human Dillon.

The ending felt a bit rushed, with some of the big reveal being anticlimactic, you can see it coming from like halfway through the book. All of that being said this was a fun slightly risqué read and I very much am looking forward to any sequels.

NetGalley graciously provided me with a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review all opinions expressed are my own.

I did not like this book at all. It was so slow paced for me and I just couldn’t get into the characters at all. I had to quit about 55% through the book.

5⭐️. Like most of my ARCs, I had no expectations but this book held my interest from beginning to end. I really enjoyed this book. If you want a fun and fast read, this is the book for you.

It’s Hogwarts Meets Quantico. Dillon grew up in Ireland with his dad, never knew his mother except that she left them. At 18, he found out that he’s half vampire (dhampire) and had to attend an exclusive vampire school up in the Swiss Alps.

Nicole Arend did a great job setting up the sequence of events; ending in a cliffhanger. It was unpredictable. I cannot wait for the next book.

Thank you, Netgalley and Atria Books for the eARC in return for an honest review.

ARC Review: This was a great vampire academia book! The character development and building was great. It showed vampires as having very heightened emotions, especially sexually. The main premise of the book is that a dhampir (Half human, half vampire) is for the first time ever accepted into an exclusive vampire academy. He does not know his mother, but is constantly told she is very powerful and that she left to protect him and his father. It was a bit easy to figure out who his mother was, but it was still great and you don’t truly find out until the very end. He faces many trials and tribulations as he was not even aware until he was sent to this school that he was half vampire. It was very entertaining and I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys all things vampire.

This book ended up being much better than I had expected. The more I read, the better it got.

Dillon is a half vampire half human that attends an elite vampire academy. I’m sure you can already imagine how that goes for Dillon. There are ups and downs throughout this entire book and an ending I never saw coming!

VAMPS is basically a CW teen show in book form.

Rich and pretty teenage vampires meet at an elite boarding school, and rivalries and hookups ensue. The main character, Dillon, is an outsider, a scholarship student who is also a dhampir, a vampire-human hybrid. He knows nothing about vampires and their abilities—everything from flying to transformation to reading minds and more—but of course Dillon turns out to be the most powerful and gifted of them all. (He literally has extra special blood!) Oh, and there’s a love triangle, with Dillon and his chief rival sparring over a girl.

Is this a good book? Not really. Cliches abound. Dillon is so obviously going to win through everything that the story felt a bit flat to me. Even in the action scenes, which should have been exciting, the stakes seemed low. I was completely expecting the twist at the end, too.

But . . . Those CW shows have their fans who enjoy the cliches, no matter how obvious or silly the story may be. I did read the whole thing, even though I often rolled my eyes and occasionally laughed at it.

If you are looking for a cheesy light read that requires absolutely no mental engagement, this might be just thing for you.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

Messy and rushed. Too many characters are introduced too quickly, and the plot needs work. It was interesting to have a male lead being introduced to a vampiric world, but the lack of any kind of character development drags any appeal down.

This story was hard to follow and the characters were hard to keep track of. I wanted a good vampire story, but unfortunately I didn't mesh well with this one!

Thank you #netgalley for an early read of #vampsfreshblood

If you are a big fan of vampire novels, this is something you would probably enjoy. Anyone who reads books like Vampire Academy could likely find many elements they enjoy in this book. So, anyone looking for vampires and romance should give this one a try! It wasn't the best written book I've ever read, but definitely some fun to it.

While it’s been many years since I read the Vampire Academy novels, it was no surprise that the series instantly jumped to mind when I started reading VAMPS: Fresh Blood, what with them sharing a number of similarities. And while the stories are different, I do think it’s a fair comparison, and I also think that if you’re a fan of the VA series odds are you’re probably likely to enjoy VAMPS as well. The story focuses around outsider Dillion, a dhampir (aka half vampire half human) , as he attempts to understand what he is, what he can do, and to fit in at an elite school for vampires. Is it Shakespeare? Of course not, it’s about out of control youths with incredible powers. And honestly it is a fun and entertaining enough story, especially if you just want a break from reality that you don’t want to think too much about while you’re reading. Please don’t read that comment as a negative, because it was most definitely not meant as such. You know how after a long day you sometimes just want to veg out and watch a tv show that’s mindless fun and you don’t need to focuses so intently on or think too hard about? This is the literary equivalent. Hopefully you get what I’m saying. I’d definitely read more of this series. Also I will say it almost feels like a twist to have a male lead since so many YA books feature female leads. Of course I suppose I should also say I think he book might be a little risqué for younger YA readers…but then we are talking vampires, right? I’m going round this one up to 4 stars. I’d like to thank Atria Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an eARC of VAMPS.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XBUTP4R1VRKW/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

This book was a quick and easy read for me. I enjoyed it for the most part, I would have preferred a list of all the characters and who they were or were not friends with. There were a few points where I was so confused because I couldn't remember who was friendly and who was not.

I enjoyed reading this from a male perspective and learning all the new things in this world.
8/10 would recommend

"VAMPS: by Nicole Arend is a captivating, dark academia-tinged debut that is sure to entice readers. Fans of non-horror vampire stories and Olivia Blake's The Atlas Six should add this to their must-read list."

I am so incredibly sad that I didn't like this. After a string of dnfs, I couldn't wait to pick up a vampire story. Especially one compared to my latest vampire obsession, Vampire Academy. (Yall go stream season 1 on Peacock so we can get a season 2 and all the books adapted.) I guess it's sort of like that but with a male protagonist. The dialog is wonky. There's so many people. It's a bit frustrating. If you love vampire stories, I hope you still pick up VAMPS and give it a try for yourself. I will never not promote more vampire stories. There will never be enough to satisfy me. Maybe I will give this one another try at a later time.

Kicking off the new year with VAMPS I can say that this book was very much up my alley. As someone who has always been team Edward just from the title I knew that I would like this book. Now I’ve read my fair share of Vampire books but this one gave a fresh new take on the vamp lore and gave it a modern twist.What really stood out to me is the fact that the main character is male it’s a fresh take on a genre that is dominantly female. This was an easy fun read where the characters weren’t perfect.Expect the basic vampire stereotypes when reading this book they even sleep in coffins surprisingly not the weirdest thing once you get used to it. This book heavily reminded me of Vampire Academy meets Harry Potter, two series I enjoyed.It’s an angsty trashy teen fic with potential that I’ll definitely keep reading.