I DNF Blood Born 24% of the way through, I just had a hard time connecting with the story and the characters.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately I DNF'd this one about 30% of the way through.

The story premise and plot were interesting in theory, however it felt a bit too fast paced and erratic at the beginning.
I feel like this would be a good read for YA readers.

We are all desperate for good vampire reads, but this is not one of them.

The writing is so bad that I can't even remember if the vampire aspects have potential to be reworked into a good story.

Reads like poorly written fanfic.

Wasn't as good as I was hoping for. I wasn't able to get into the story as everything felt a little too pushy/over done.

Anything to do with vampires, sign me up. Like immediately. I enjoyed this book enough to give it a three stars. That's not to say I won't continue the series, but it wasn't absolutely amazing. I enjoyed most of the book, but I feel like the characters could have used a bit more backstory/depth. I also didn't really like that they were on the young side of YA, there's nothing wrong with that. However, I am trying to lean more towards adult/older YA. Overall it was a pretty good book and I look forward to the rest of the series.

Blood Born is a YA vampire book and a young YA audience. I think this is going to be a series due to the open ending. There were all the vampire pieces with a few little twists on what a "classic" vampire would be like. I think my main problem with this book was just that I am not a young YA and it read so young that I just didn't really get into it. A younger audience will probably enjoy it more than I did.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy of blood born this was wonderful and i ordered it for my store.

I read so many vampire stories that new stories need to have something unique or fresh to stand out. (But also please include some of the tropes I love.) And I don't think Blood Born did that for me. Blood Born would be the perfect fast-paced read if you are just starting to get into vampire books. While I realize my opinion is my own, I definitely recommend picking it up and deciding for yourself.

Thank you to Netgalley and BHC Press for providing me with a review copy.

Vampires. I love them. From the folklore to their modern re-imagining at the hands of authors like Anne Rice, Jay Kristoff, Charlaine Harris, Jonathan Maberry, and so many more, I can't get enough of the Fanged Folk. (As long as they don't sparkle. Sorry, Twilight fans, but no...just no.)

Shelley Wilson has created a blend of the old and the new vampire tropes. Each vampire has their own set of abilities and powers with a few commonalities. Yes, they're stronger than humans but not supernaturally strong. Yes, they're faster than humans but not supernaturally faster. Yes, they require blood and have issues with sunlight. But the uniqueness of Wilson's vampires makes for interesting reading.

Blood Born is definitely aimed at a young adult audience, and the younger side of YA, truth be told. While it's fun to learn about the vampires and the differences between them, especially the Immortals and the Rogues, from Emma's point of view, we never really dive deeply into the relationships she's forming with the other vampires in Cara's group. I would have like to have spent a little more time exploring these budding relationships, and perhaps this will be something Wilson plans to cover in the continuation of the series.

Overall, Blood Born is a promising start to a new series. How Emma and the others develop over time will be interesting to watch.

While the plot has a lot of potential, the execution was lacking.
The relationship with the grandma seemed really weird, the dialogue was cheesy, of course sh'e's a vampire princess and a true immortal.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc for my honest review

I did enjoy this book; it is definitely targeted for the younger teen audience. This book I think will be the first of a series with the way it ended. It did leave a bit of an open ending. I enjoyed the main character, Emma. There were a large number of characters, which at times lost me throughout the book. 3 star

Blood Born by Shelley Wilson
“Humans are nothing more than a meal to a new vampire.”
~~~
Alrighty so this is my second time reading a Shelley Wilson book. I love her writing style, the plot was detailed, little slow in the beginning. It did have a slow build up which is good. Loved battle/fight scenes, they were intense. Then there was the family dynamics and found family in all of this which was amazing to see; along with the betrayal of family which was sometimes a little confusing.
But I thought it was a quick read and it left off on a good ending for the second book that makes me really hopeful for what is to come. I would like to thank Shelley Wilson, BHC Press, and Netgalley for sending me an eARC. Blood Born releases on May 23,23, hurry and preorder.

I've always loved a good vampire book and this one was pretty decent. The pacing of the book has been extremely fast, there was no easing into the story, we were just thrown right into it. The writing style was very direct, no imagery. Just statement after statement, making the pacing feel like i need to read at 2x the speed.

Enjoyed the book for the most part, but i think it needed to be slowed down a bit and had some more fleshed out thoughts/plans.

While the book ends on a cliffhanger, i'm unsure if i'll be reading it.

I thought it would be refreshing for me to read a book with vampires in? I don't do it often... 👀 AHH I absolutley loved this, but I knew I would, I really enjoy books where a mortal is changed into a vampire and then has to adjust to their new way of living and along the way finds out family secrets etc its my most favourite thing to read (because I want it to happen to me, my neck is always exposed even in winter) I feel this is definitley on the younger end of YA and the main themes are found family/self acceptence, this was fast paced and really fun, I feel like the characters could of been fleshed out a tad more but I'm looking forward to seeing them in the next book,  if you enjoy YA horror I would highly recommend! Thankyou to netgalley and the author for an eARC!

The cover has an older “grown up” vibe, quite minimalist yet still striking and the byline of “Death was only the beginning” certainly piqued my interest. Also having read another book by this author I decided to take a closer look and then reading the blurb for the book I decided it was firmly on my “had to read” list! I wasn’t disappointed!

Emma didn’t have the best start in life, her mother died in childbirth and she has been brought up by a rather cold and distant grandmother Flora. Or that’s who she presumes Flora is. Emma has always been a loner, preferring to be alone with her thoughts. Things become rapidly worse and more dangerous for Emma when totally out of the blue she is attacked and killed by a vampire! However, that just the very beginning as a hooded stranger swoops in and “saves” Emma. It turns out this stranger has changed life as she knew it for Emma forever. This mystery stranger has awakened something that had been lying dormant within Emma since the day she was born. Now Emma has to come to terms with being a vampire and the fact that entails acquiring and drinking blood on a regular basis to keep control of her new even darker side and survive. When it turns out Flora had prior knowledge to the dark vampire side that was dormant within Emma, naturally Emma has an endless amount of questions. Flora brings Emma some blood bags enough to keep her safe and fed until she returns from an acquaintance that may have more of the answers that Emma seeks. Unfortunately, Flora does not return, she has been taken by someone who wishes to lure out Emma for a darker purpose. In the mean time representatives from the group Haven seek out and befriend Emma, taking her into their “safe place.”
It turns out Emma is “special” in fact she is a Blood Born vampire, her surname Hartfield means she is a descendent of one of the strongest and original families, more or less “vampire royalty”. Though Emma is befriended by those in Haven she is still an outcast, a blood born vampire amongst half blood vampires.

Theres lots of swing and twists and turns within the book, with Emma initially being accepted at Haven, then when her true Hartfield identity is revealed she is ostracised and has to slowly gain the trust of the friends she made whilst fighting an unknown who seems to want anyone she cares about dead to hurt her. Emma also trusts an older vampire so much so she begins to fall for him, only to learn something he was hiding that makes her feel totally betrayed by him.

The writing/style of the book reminded me a little of Dakota Cassidy, and Michele Bardsley but Blood Born is for a Teen/YA audience. There’s plenty of action, mystery and suspense but there is also love, romance, and humour too. I really enjoyed reading Blood Born and it did leave me wanting to know/read more. I have really only scratched the surface n my description of the book as I do not want to spoil the “surprises & twists” as and when they are revealed you read the book for yourselves

My immediate thoughts when I finished reading Blood Born were that I definitely wanted to read more. Blood Born ends with loose ends and potential for lots more to happen. The fight definitely doesn’t seem to be over yet!

Summing up, Blood Born is a really good start to a potentially brilliant series. Twins, Good vs Evil, a love interest that we aren’t sure of which side he is truly 100% on. Blood Born had great characters, the good guys, the bad guys, and the guys playing both sides! The backstory was slowly revealed, though I feel there’s more to come, the tension was building. . . .and then there’s the whole question of who/what will triumph.

What I liked the most about this book is that it strays pretty far from the standard vampire trope that’s seen in most forms of media. The main franchises that I can think of (Twilight and The Vampire Diaries) have the vampire characters written as being borderline indestructible at least in the terms of strength. In Blood Born (BB), Wilson presents the vampires as strikingly human which is refreshing. Each vampire in BB has their own “power” that is unique to them. I’m unsure if there is any “overlap” between the characters, but so far only one vampire has been explicitly stated to have the supersonic speed that most people would attribute to vampires as a whole. The vampires in BB are still faster than humans, though, just not to the extent that the aforementioned character is. This is the same with strength; they’re all strong, but they do need to put considerable effort to force things open. The BB vampires do fall in line with the blood drinking and sunlight sensitivities; however, Emma seems to be affected to less of a degree given her specific lineage.

I can appreciate that Emma’s power seems to be inline with her observatory nature as a human, and the ability to distinguish between friend or foe is a nice addition to her ability to sense people in her surroundings. I am interested to see if Wilson develops her power past Emma needing to concentrate on it. Toward the end of the book, I started to wonder if Emma would be able to cultivate her power to the point of it running on autopilot (for lack of a better term). Especially considering the missions her and Cara’s nest are sure to go on.

Something that I didn’t particularly care for (and one of the main causes to knock my otherwise 5-star review down to 4) was James. More specifically Emma’s inability to be able to distinguish him as someone to watch out for, coupled with the ease in which she developed *feelings* for him. Never mind the fact that he’s however many years old and she’s 17. I know that the legal age of consent in the UK is 16, but it had the potential to be groom-y and I’m glad that it wasn’t. However, back to my main point being that James seemed to be a blind spot in Emma’s ability to sense someone around her and being able to tell if they’re good or bad. But he’s that type of character that you find yourself wanting to jump into the book and warn the poor girl about him. I’m interested to see if there are going to be other instances where Emma can’t discern who is good or bad and how it gets developed if there are.

Something else that bothered me was how interesting the characters were at surface level, and we never got to traverse Emma’s relationships with them. There is *a lot* of potential to be utilized with the interpersonal relationships in the story, especially between Emma and the members of Cara’s nest. I would have liked to see more of a relationship developed between the council and Emma, but that’s just a personal thing. Henric is mentioned several times, but the only instance that Emma interacts with him is during her arrival interview after being taken in by Cara. I think Cara’s leadership could have been developed a little more, perhaps we could have been given a chapter (or a portion of a chapter) dedicated to learning how Cara leads and operates. Did the younger half-bloods still get conventional schooling? Or did they get taken to the Haven and get tasks put upon them in lieu of schooling? Flora is revealed to have known about Emma’s father and her fate, but that’s never really expounded on. That would have been a really interesting arc to have gotten. I would have liked more information on Dustin and his role and how he traverses human life knowing about the presence of vampires.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series. I wish the book had ended on less of a cliffhanger because of my need to know what happens, but alas, I will be anxiously awaiting the resolution.

I would like to say thank you to NetGalley, as well as BHC Press and Shelley Wilson for allowing me the opportunity to read this ahead of publishing.

**This review has been cross-posted on Goodreads and NetGalley, and will be posted to a (currently in development) IG and blog at a later date.**

I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately it just fell flat for me. The main character is whiny and unimpressive. The villain story line was confusing and the romance was ridiculous. The whole book I was wondering what the heck was going on. Not in a confused couldn't follow the plot way but in a why is this important/happening. The "family" she created was way too rushed for a girl who has never opened up to anyone in her life. The deaths felt unnecessary (spoiler: especially Flora's. the way they just sent her back to the place she had already been kidnapped and then were surprised when they found her dead was just stupid. Obviously that was going to happen). The main character was a baby vampire who knew nothing and kept charging in with idiotic confidence. And again the romance was just gross (she's 17 and believes he's thousands of years old. They kiss once and she's in love. Then we find out something even grosser at the end). This has turned into a tangent but I was really disappointed by the way the story progressed. I will not be reading the next book.

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me . The story and characters didn’t really grab my attention .The characters lacked depth and imagination.

as someone who has loved vampire stories quite literally my entire life, this one was a bit of a disappointment for me. the plot fell flat and was very hard to follow. thank you to netgalley for the copy!