Hope you are all doing well! Well, I have a review ready for you of a great YA read that has my fav supernatural creatures--vampires. Hope you are intrigued, the series looks promising.
Summary from Goodreads
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Paperback, 278 pages
Published September 21st 2010
by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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But now, her doctor-turned-stepfather has a brand-new treatment that he thinks will change everything. And it does. As soon as the new blood starts pumping into Shay's veins, she has visions of a different life...Gabriel's life. She sees an orphanage, loss, fangs, blood, and lust that she can't explain.
Is Gabriel real? And if he is, could he really be what she thinks he is?
Review
So I picked up Crave this summer and it's my Random Read for the month. Crave is about a girl who is dying of a rare blood disorder. Shay, our heroine, begins to receive transfusions that make her stronger than she's ever felt in her life. She loves the feeling. She also loves seeing visions of Gabriel.
So this book is set up in two parts: the first part is called Dreams, and though it all we get to know Shay and what her life has been like. It's been pretty crappy. She's always been sick, and she hates that everyone treats her differently because of it. She never goes to gym class, she's never dated, her best friend is a mother hen and Shay has always felt weak and looked after by everyone, treated kindly by everyone because of her rare blood disorder. In Dreams, we find out all of this about her, but we also see Shay getting stronger because of the new blood transfusions, and we start to see that she wants to live so desperately. She wants to act like any normal teenager and do stupid things, and just have fun with her friends.
In Dreams, we also get to learn about Gabriel. Gabriel is the boy Shay dreams about whenever she's receiving a transfusion. We see him at various stages in life, first as a young man about to become a vampire, and then as a small child, later as a someone Shay doesn't quite recognize because he seems so unlike himself. But what we do learn about Gabriel is that he values the experience of life. He's the sort of person that drinks in every experience, every moment and really lives. And Shay loves that about him because she's never lived that way, and she enjoys being in Gabriel's body and feeling how much he loves to live.
The second part of the book, called Reality is where things get a little more interesting. We find out Gabriel is real, but we find out some really horrible things about Shay's family. We also find out why Shay is sick, and why Gabriel's blood makes her feel so much better. But this part of the book, while great, made me uncomfortable. We get to really meet Gabriel, but he's not like the Gabriel in Shay's dreams. He's angry, rightfully so, but it seems so out of character, so different that I almost didn't quite know what to make of him. And although he finally becomes the Gabriel from Shay's dreams, a thoughtful, kind man, it happens so near the end that I almost missed how great he is. I almost didn't notice that the writing style wasbeginning to do a lot of showing versus telling, which is a style I enjoy a lot more.
So, book one was great! It ended on a cliffhanger which made me want to scream, but I can pick up book two easily enough I think. I think book one was largely about set up, bringing the two characters together and setting up some back story and now that we have that foundation, I'm hoping that the rest of the series will be a lot more powerful. As it was, this book really was well paced and the story is engaging enough that I found it hard to put it down. I wish the authors had done a better job of showing instead of telling, but I started to see that at the end and I'm thinking the next book will be more polished in that regard.
4.5 glittering stars
2 comments:
Wow sounds thrilling!..and deep!..i love the whole idea of them being connected in such a way..:) . awesome review!
It was really neat! Hope you enjoy it's,
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