Review: Blood Drunk – Faded Blue by Angela Lovell

Genre: YA paranormal
Published: September 2011
Review by Anachronist

Synopsis:

Blue Knightly, a boy from a small Midwest town, has to fly to New York due to family emergency - his little sister, Lacy, disappeared without a trace six weeks ago. The NY police have found a corpse of a young girl very similar to her. Blue must go to the mortuary to recognize the body and he is fearing the worst; after seeing it, however, and displaying a flair for keen observation under stress, the boy is sure his sister is still alive. Indeed he is right but it doesn’t mean the end of the trouble.

He finds Lacy sleeping in a vampire lair and she is not alone in bed. She actually can’t return with him home at once, even though she learns their mom has cancer and won’t live long. The problem is that Lacy carries a vampire child so she must shun sunlight and eat very rare meat as if she was a vampire herself. What’s more, Blue is informed soon afterwards that there are actually two candidates for the father position. It seems that freshly unleashed Lacy has been a rather naughty girl…

Blue doesn’t know what to do with so much shocking news, especially that he kind of falls for a very nice female vampire, Kat, a proud owner of a pet alligator and the sister of one of Lacy’s fanged boyfriends. It happens that Blue and Lacy actually land right in the middle of a local war between two vampire gangs (as you can guess Lacy’s other boyfriend, Alex, is the leader of the other one). After some time spent among vampires they desperately want to return home. Will they be allowed to do so? Can vampires really love humans? What other mysteries have to be unveiled before Lacy and Blue will really understand their fate?

What I liked:

The book was well told – it was a breeze to read and the narration was well-paced. I didn’t have any problems with finishing it during two evenings.

If reading the synopsis you thought: “just another Twilight spin-off” – think again. This one I found to be more edgy and funnier. Firstly there are no shining vampires in there, just monsters who can kill and manipulate humans but cannot kill each other. You keep wondering how much humanity was left in them. I like such monsters.

Lacy is no maudlin Bella either but a  teenage girl who happened to got knocked up by a vampire but still likes her human side - parties, glad rags and gossip. Everybody can understand her easily, you hear such stories about teenage girls left on their own in a big city (minus the vampires of course) all the time. The fact that you discover the fantasy New York and the rest of the fictional world mostly through Blue Knightly’s eyes was also a bit refreshing. He is such a nice big brother and a really decent guy; I am sure every girl would like to have such an older sibling – helpful, chivalrous and caring; what’s more he can think on his own and overcome his weaknesses when there is such a need.

What I didn’t like:

Present tense narration made reading this book a bit like reading a shooting script. Well, small wonder – Ms Lovell has written for stage screen and TV. Personally I am rather fond of the third person narrative voice so it didn’t work for me as well as it could.

What’s more…this book is the first part of a series so it ends with a big fat cliffhanger – be prepared! It also features a kind of a love triangle and I hate them passionately; generally speaking Lacy seemed to lack integrity when dealing with vampires (but being so young and them being so experienced you can imagine they could manipulate her easily). Also Kat, Blue’s love interest, was rather a shady if not duplicitous character. I gather there are some revelations saved for future parts but when I finished this one I found out I couldn’t sympathize with either of the female leads. Not really.

One more thing. There is one scene in a restaurant when Lacy accidentally gets poisoned with garlic (her boyfriends forgot to inform her that garlic is as noxious for a vampire as sunlight, silver and wooden stakes) and has a very bad allergic reaction (to say the least of it and I really can’t describe it further because it would be a spoiler). I found it really sickening. I wondered what a scene straight from a bad horror movie was doing in an, after all, book aimed at older YA audience.

Final verdict:

This novel was neither very good nor very bad; I would place it somewhere in the middle. If you simply love teen vampire stories it might be something for you; if you hardly tolerate such literature you can skip this one without any remorse.

Aren't I a dilligent poltergeist? ;)

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Note from B:

Melissa is gonna have my head! Nope no flash, I just got home and it is getting late and the internet connection sucks, so perhaps tomorrow.