Book Review: Stolen Night by Rebecca Maizel.

Product details:
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books.
Paperback, 432 pages.
Release date: July 5th 2012
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Ages:  12+
Series:  Vampire Queen #2
Other books in series: Infinite Days
Source: Purchased.

Lenah Beaudonte should be dead. But having sacrificed herself to save another, she finds herself awakening with strange powers that are neither vampire nor human - and a new enemy on her trail. In her vampire life, Lenah had thought that being human was all she ever wanted; but the human heart suffers pain, heartbreak and loss. With her new powers growing and the dark force of the Nex after her soul, Lenah faces a choice: between the mortal love of gorgeous Justin, whose passion fed her human soul, and taking a different path to become the mistress of her own destiny, wherever that may lead ..

Vampire novels – they get a bad rep. I know people who say that vampire novels are done – that nobody reads them anymore. And I know people who won't read about vampires no matter what. They hopped on the scary train to dystopia-ville a long time ago, and they won’t be back.  It seems to me that YA vampire novels became a victim of their own success a while back and now everybody is suffering from that bad post-Twilight hangover that seemed to spawn a thousand, sometimes good, sometimes really not so good, Twi-alikes.  But what if there was a vampire novel that was different from all the rest?

That was the feeling I had when I read Rebecca Maizel’s debut novel Infinite Days two years ago.  Infinite Days breathed new life into the somewhat jaded vampire genre, offering us Lenah Beaudonte, a Vampire Queen who wanted nothing more than to be a normal human girl.  Now, vampires who want to be human, who want to live, breathe, bleed and die, just like humans do.  That’s different. It’s interesting.

If Infinite Days re-vamped (sorry, couldn't help myself!) a tired genre, then Stolen Night has completely turned it on its head.  This is a book where the rules have all been unwritten, where nothing is set in stone, and where you should expect the unexpected. Always.

As Stolen Night opens Lenah Beaudonte should be dead.  After all she sacrificed herself for her former coven member Vicken in the same ritual that saw her lose her true love Rhode forever. But Lenah’s not dead.  She’s still a regular human girl with a totally hot human boyfriend.  But there’s also a new guy in Lenah’s life in the shape of the chain-smoking ex-vampire, Vicken.  So, the ritual did work. It just didn’t kill Lenah. And if Lenah didn’t die, then maybe…Well, you’ll just have to find out where I was headed with that sentence by reading the book for yourself.  Safe to say, Stolen Night is a total thrill ride with startling twists at every turn.  You’ll be shocked and surprised, that I can guarantee!

 One of the only things that really irked me about Infinite Days was the character of Justin Enos, Lenah’s now boyfriend.  I felt he paled in comparison to Rhode, the love of Lenah’s life who we got to know (and I totally fell for) in flashback form in the first book.  In Stolen Night I wanted something more for Justin. I wanted something to happen that would make him less run-of-the-mill normal, and dare I say it, less boring.  I’m not going to go into details, because that would spoil the surprise, but I will say that I got my wish, and I’ll also say that Justin’s journey in this book was nothing short of a masterstroke by Maizel.

A total page turner throughout, Stolen Night finished on a cliffhanger and left me wanting more already.  I haven’t heard any official confirmation of a third book as of yet, but there has to be one, right? It can’t end like this. I need to know what happens next!

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Check out the great new US covers for Infinite Days and Stolen Nights (Jan 2013).  You guys might have to wait a little longer for this book, but it's going to look really good when you get it.  I love this series makeover.

What do you think?

 

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