Lailah (Styclar Saga, #1)

by Nikki Kelly

The girl knows she's different. She doesn't age. She has no family. She has visions of a past life, but no clear clues who she really is, or her name. But there is a face in her dreams - a light that breaks through the darkness. She knows his name is Gabriel. One night, the girl encounters an injured stranger named Jonah. She learns that Jonah belongs to a generation of vampires that is threatened by darker forces. His kind are fighting with help of unlikely allies-archangels. Including one named Gabriel. In the crossfire between good and evil and life and death, the girl learns her name: Lailah. But where does she belong? Gabriel and Jonah both want to protect her. But Lailah will have to fight her own battle to find out who she truly is.

• ISBN10: 1250051517
• ISBN13: 9781250051516
• Publish Date: 7 October 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 2 July 2016
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Feiwel and Friends
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[KitsuneBae]

Lailah’s a total winner when it comes to giving me a lot of time to sleep, idle around, check blogs, and do other mundane things for three days. Yes, three days. Normally, I can finish a 300-page book within 3-4 hours but Lailah’s oh so boring that I spent more time doing other things than reading it. I really expected that Lailah’s going to be a one-of-a-kind story about angels and vampires considering the number of its Wattpad readers. Alas, I was wrong and it just left me regretting the fact that I haven’t DNFed it at 50 pages.

Set in modern London, Lailah tells a story of a girl who’s confused about who she really is. For one, her memory’s a mess not being able to remember some things about her life. Second, a shadow always appears whenever she’s in great peril. And third, she always finds herself coming back to life again and again regardless of the manner of her death. Now, I really love this type of premise because it always makes for a curious read. However, the author decided to take a different direction and instead of giving me a story with a tight woven plot driven by twists and grand revelations, she opted to drown me with unnecessary love triangle page after page. What’s worse is that, that love triangle slowly evolved into a quadrangle as the story was nearing its end.

Aside from the geometric love affair, Lailah doesn’t have a single character worth rooting for. The main character, Lailah, is essentially a creature who, despite her age and her experiences (imagine living in this world for over 200 years), is irritatingly naïve and wishy washy. Putting those things aside, instead of confronting her mounting problems regarding her identity and the vampires out to get her, she spends most of her time thinking about the girls involved with her love interests and whether or not the guys are really in love with her. The love interests are also an annoying bunch of alpha males that I cannot connect with. I can say the same thing for the side characters.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this book was heavily driven by the main character’s dilemma about her love life. The plot didn’t happen until the last 50 pages of the book. The romance didn’t even compensate for that as it was all a big tease and the story just ended with the heroine still confused about her heart’s desire. It didn’t even have the “it’s-so-bad-it’s-good” vibe so yeah, I want my fucking hours back.

Overall, Lailah is another series that I’ll throw in the void andwouldn’t recommend even to those angel-vampire story crazed fans.