Thank you netgalley and rb media for the free ALC. My opinions are being left voluntarily. What a great debut. Very visual book easily adapted to tv or movies. My only tiny thing was it felt long for a Ya book. A few tweaks and easily could have been adult. This book is neccessary for kids of colour to have a vampire story as too many are white vampires.

Excited to see what the auth2ir writes next.

4.5/5☆

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with the ARC for this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

I enjoyed this story but what's not to love about a sapphic vampire love story. I'm not sure if Layla or Elise were bisexual or lesbian but either way they were awesome. I did feel like their relationship wasn't built up enough though to go from enemies to lovers. For half the story I almost thought that I was wrong and that Layla and Elise weren't endgame (there's a few vampire stories coming out around the same time so I thought I mixed up my stories). Neither of them seemed to have any feelings for each other besides animosity. Neither of them in their POV's even alluded to the fact that they felt anything other than friendship for one another. I think the only sign I saw was that Layla was jealous of Sterling being close to Elise but that could have been interpreted as her being jealous as a friend. It felt like all of their feelings for each other only came out AFTER Layla bit Elise and that made me feel like Elise was only enthralled by Layla's venom from her bite.

I was also very upset when the only asian character in the book was killed off not only by her best friend (Layla) but in the most gruesome way possible. I was so excited for her when she was turned into a human because I wanted her to be able to go find her family. Then she was literally torn to shreds and I can't forgive that.

The only other part that I didn't like was how quickly Sterling turned on Elise. They're supposed to be best friends. They seemed to have this really strong bond and yet... Sterling threw all of that away? He was so worried for Elise the whole story and when he flipped suddenly to her dad's side it just felt wrong. I didn't care for that part.

I'm not sure if I'm going to read the second novel when it comes out (because it does end on a bit of a cliffhanger) but we'll see.

A note on this audiobook: I loved the narrator and was glad when I was approved for this audiobook because I was having a hard time reading the PDF. Listening to Tamika read it though breathed some life into this story that I needed. I truly enjoyed hearing her voice.