A Shade of Vampire (Shade of Vampire, #1)

by Bella Forrest

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Honestly, I'm not too sure why I downloaded this book. Most likely it was because it was a dollar, and why not for a dollar. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely despise vampire stories, especially after the whole Twilight and Vampire Diaries bullshit that was a thing (still a thing?). Vampires used to intrigue me, but then they became cheesy and overrated and just not... frightening. I'm at the point where even Dracula seems like a cuddly teddy bear at this point. But I digress.

This books wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. No, it's not the greatest thing in the world, but it's decent enough. I don't really regret the dollar I spent on it, but I wouldn't have spent any more on it. So, saying that, I probably won't be finishing the series. (Honestly though, I'm not too sure how much story there is for these two, but nine novels seems to be a bit excessive. And I honestly didn't grow attached to them too much to continue going. Sorry, Bella, but you tried.) I feel like there was a lot of potential for this book, but it fell flat with what it could have been. There are just a few too many things that are left untold or unexplained, which might be a good marketing thing for picking up the subsequent novels, but more annoying for me than anything else. There's a so called prophecy that gets mentioned once I think, before it fades into the background so you can read about Sophia and Derek falling into a Stockholm Syndrome type love and a "love at first sight" bullshit. And with an odd triangle with the brother and her (former?) best friend/love interest. I don't even know...

Another twenty or so pages could have added to the ending to set up the next book, not just a 500 word epilogue that still makes no sense at all. The author wasn't that bad of a writer. Her pacing for it was rather well, and characters were decent, but there were still things missing out or never really introduced when they properly should have been (i.e., the prophecy, is it even that?). The story just mainly focuses on Derek and Sophia and everything else seems to fade away into the background until she needed to end the story. I still don't know much about the vampires involvement with the world, or about the other covens that seems to be begging for help but are only mentioned like twice. The Shade was written decently, but I'm still missing out on so much that could have been added and I feel like I missed out on a story that could have been a whole lot better.