My Love Lies Bleeding (The Drake Chronicles)

by Alyxandra Harvey

The Drakes are rather different to your usual neighbours. They are vampires and some of the members of the family date back to the twelfth century. One of the children, Solange, is the only born female vampire known and, as such, she poses a direct threat to the vampire queen. Her best friend Lucy is human, and when Solange is kidnapped Lucy and Solange's brother, Nicholas, set out to save her. Lucy soon discovers that she would like to be more than just friends with Nicholas. But how does one go about dating a vampire? Meanwhile, Solange finds an unlikely ally in Kieran, a vampire slayer on the hunt for his father's killer ...

• ISBN10: 1408803402
• ISBN13: 9781408803400
• Publish Date: 4 January 2010
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• URL: http://bloomsbury.com/Trade/

Reviews

[nitzan_schwarz]

After 2nd read: 3.5 stars (Originally 5)
It's just, I kind of didn't like Sol's storyline at all on the re-read (though I still loved Lucy and Nicholas's), and since her storyline is half the novel... :/

June, 2012 Read:
This was a great, great read. Loved Lucy and Sol!!!

Do you love vampires? Hot boys? Kick butt heroines? Well, what do you know - this is a book for you. Except, the vampires in My Love Lies Bleeding are very different from those you know. But wait, we'll get to that.

The book is told from two different POVs: One of Sol, the youngest—and only—daughter of a big family of vampires, who's nearing her 16th birthday, which is the date on which she'll die - and be reborn as a blood drinker.

Then there is Lucy, Sol's best—and human—friend. Lucy is spunky, energetic, and treats the Drakes like family. They're all like brothers to her—except Nicholas, who Lucy feels anything but brotherly feelings. Because then it'll be like wanting to kiss your brother—ew!

Oh, and there's a prophecy about Sol, vampires after her life and others after her body and soul.

So, yes. Life's good. Until you die. And then some...

I would write more, but I'm off to read the next book!

This was a fun read, I didn't expect to get pulled in the way I did so that was pleasantly surprising. I realized half way through this book that it must have been based off of Snow White, the seven brothers, the 'hunter', and then the ending clicked. I googled it and found out I was right. I quite enjoyed that this was based off of Snow White, although I did want it to be a tad more dramatic and Solange was annoyingly too good and always tried to stop people from protecting her. I hate it when the protagonist feels bad for people getting hurt because they were protecting her, so she decides to run away so they no longer get hurt protecting her. It was naive and annoying, I just wanted her to accept the situation and try her hardest to stop putting her brothers and family in danger by rebelling just because she felt trapped.

For the first half of the book I kept waiting for the story to happen, when I realized that what I was reading was the story. So I was a little disappointed because what I thought was setting up the story, the characters and the relationships turned out to be the actual thing. Ah well. This was still pretty entertaining.

The ending wasn't as dramatic as I expected. It was dramatic but the way it was written made it lose it's urgency and I felt blind for the battle because it wasn't described very well and I couldn't see it in my head.

Will definitely be reading the next book!

[Amber]

Didn't like it.

Review to come.

[Leah]

For a while now I've been wondering whether to buy My Love Lies Bleeding by Alyxandra Harvey. It sounded like such a good read but I wasn't totally sure if I would enjoy it and, as such, I never got around to buying it, particularly after I read a friend's review of the book and she wasn't a huge fan and I trust her judgement. However, with the second book being released in July, the publishers decided to put My Love Lies Bleeding up on their website for anyone who wanted to read the book to download. I jumped at the chance to read the book for free and, without intending to, I got stuck in immediately.

All of the different vampire books all set out their vampire mythology differently; Twilight has the Cullen's with their 'vegetarian' ways and sparkly skin, the Blue Blood series has a fascinating vampire history (and is actually my favourite of all vampire mytology) and now we have the 'Drake Chronicles' with it's very own vampire mythology. There's a hierarchy to the Drake Chronicles set of vampires, with a queen, then there's the fact no female vampire has ever been born, only turned, until Solange. And then there's the different types of vampires; which baffled me completely. There's the Helios-Ra, the Hel-Blar the Drake's themselves, and others; I can't check the names of the rest because the book was only free on the 5th of July. It's safe to say, though, that the vampire hierarchy of the Drake Chronicle books are far, wide and very complicated. I would have to read the book again to fully grasp who everyone was, but I got the general gist of it, enough so that I could read the book with the littlest of confusion possible!

What I really liked about My Love Lies Bleeding is that it's dual-y narrated by both Solange and Lucy, giving us insight into both girls' lives. There's Solange, the first female vampire born in centuries, causing the current 'Queen' Lady Natasha to begin to worry about an old prophecy and who starts to think Solange wants to take her throne. The reader knows different though; becoming a vampire Queen is the last thing Solange wants. I enjoyed Solange's point of view, but not as much as I enjoyed Lucy's. Lucy is Solange's human best friend and has grown up with the Drake's ever since she was little so is au fait with the fact they're all vampires. Unlike most girl characters, Lucy was feisty, argumentative and willing to do anything to help her best friend and I admired that completely. It's so refresing to find a teenage girl who doesn't pander about to a boy, or shy away at the first sign of trouble. That's not to say Lucy doesn't find herself in a romantic pickle; she does, with Nicholas, the youngest Drake boy. They argue and fight which (quite quickly) turns to romance and the romantic in me lapped it up completely. Because of how quickly it happens, it could have seemed forced but it doesn't at all and I just loved Lucy and Nicholas together, they sparked off each other so well.

With all of the different types of vampires floating around, as well as the huge Drake family, there are a lot of characters to keep up with in the book. I loved Lucy and Solange, their friendship was believable and they worked well together. As for the rest of the Drake clan, I thought they were great to. OK, so I can't name them all (there are 7 Drake brothers, plus their parents and various relatives) but despite such a huge cast of characters, it kinda works. A list of characters at the beginning of the book wouldn't go a-miss but if you can separate who everyone is (the Drake's from the Hel-Blars and the Helios-Ra, not everyone separately with names) then you're good to go. Hopefully we'll get to know the brothers a bit more in the next books in the series, to help separate them a bit more from each other because, currently, the only two that stood out were Nicholas and Logan, so it would be great to get to know the other brother's a bit more.

My Love Lies Bleeding is a great opening to what is probably going to be quite a series. It sets the scene perfectly for any further books and I can't wait to get book two in the series. It's very well-written and I enjoyed getting to know both Lucy and Solange. I enjoyed Lucy more, she was such a great female character and I so hope she appears in the later Drake books because it would be such a waste for her to fade into the background. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I wasn't expecting to, but I whizzed through the 250+ pages. 250 pages is fairly short for a book and I could definitely have read on for at least another 100 pages but it was a well-proportioned book and it didn't feel rushed at all. I can't wait to get my hands on Blood Feud and get stuck into more of the Drake family and Lucy.

[Jo]

The Drake's are rather different to your usual neighbours. They are vampires and some of the members of the family date back to the twelfth century. One of the children, Solange, is the only born female vampire known and, as such, she poses a direct threat to the vampire queen. Her best friend Lucy is human, and when Solange is kidnapped Lucy and Solange's brother, Nicholas, set out to save her. Lucy soon discovers that she would like to be more than just friends with Nicholas. But how does one go about dating a vampire? Meanwhile, Solange finds an unlikely ally in Kieran, a vampire slayer on the hunt for his father's killer. From Amazon UK

I’m quite a big fan of vampire fiction, adult or YA, but for some reason, there was something about My Love Lies Bleeding that I didn’t like the sound of. Love during such drama just seemed a little off – even if I’ve read it a thousand times. I guess just the way it was described didn’t appeal to me completely, but still, it’s vampires, so I thought I would give it a go. And I loved it!

Lately, as I have a fair number of books to read, I’ve been thinking I should pick the shorter ones, so I get more read, but then I read them, and they finish, and I’m left wishing they had been longer, and itching for the next one! My Love Lies Bleeding is no exception! This book was just fantastic, and I really didn’t want it to end! It had everything; romance, action, danger, and brilliant mythology!

I loved the vampires in this book; the idea of being born into vampirism and the bloodchange – the transformation at 16 from being human to being a vampire – is just awesome. I also loved that there were different types of vampire, the normal vampires we’re more familiar with, the Host and the Cwn Mamau – vampires with a double set of fangs, the former loyal, the latter against their maker, and the Hel-Blar, blue skinned vamps with teeth that are all fangs, which are crazed with blood lust. The different types of vampire all have their place and reason, and it was great finding out about them. I also loved the political structure for vampires, it’s just brilliant! I loved it! The only thing I didn’t like was that a fair amount of the mythology was explained towards the beginning in the middle of a conversation. It stops abruptly, and then is carried on after the reader knows most of what there is to know. I’m not too keen on world building given to us like this, but I can forgive it for the rest of the book.

The characters were great! Solange and Lucy were just awesome, especially Lucy; she was gutsy and just so funny! They reminded me ever so slightly, personality wise, of Lissa and Rose from the Vampire Academy series, but only a little bit, and the stories are completely different. Solange’s older brother are great, and Nicholas is real sexy. Kieran is pretty cool, but I would have liked to know him a bit better as a person, rather than just what he does.

The romance was good, but I would have liked there to have been more build up between Nicholas and Lucy; with the plot, I can see why there wasn’t, but if the book was longer, I’m pretty sure it could have been worked in. It had so much potential for the whole anticipatory “will they, won’t they?”, it just lacked a bit for me. Kieran and Solange, on the other hand, was done really well in my opinion!

I’m all for action and danger, and “ohmigod whatsgunnahappen?!” and there is plenty of it in My Love Lies Bleeding! It’s pretty much like it all the way through, and once the fighting it starts, the heart gets a-pumping, the adrenalin is going full whack, and forget sitting on the edge of your chair, you’re leaning against it! It’s just fantastic! I loved it! But again, if the book was longer, there would have been more room for talking and finding out more about people, and letting relationships, romantic and otherwise, it would have been easier to know the characters a little more. It’s not a huge deal, but it would have been the icing on the cake.

Everyone has to read this! I can’t recommend it enough, I loved it! I so can’t wait for the sequel, Blood Feud, to be released in the UK on 5th July 2010. It’s going to be amazing! Go read this book now!

From Once Upon a Bookcase