ARC Review--Crave by Tracy Wolff

My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods…or monsters. I still can’t decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me.

Then there’s Jaxon Vega. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn’t felt anything for a hundred years. But there’s something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in me.

Which could spell death for us all.

Because Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I’m wondering if I was brought here intentionally—as the bait.

I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review.


When I heard that Tracy Wolff was writing a VAMPIRE novel this year, I freaked out! I had to have it and luck was with me when Entangled Teen granted my wish! Crave is the first book in a yet unknown series and it was everything I love about vampire books! This is the book vampire fans have been waiting for...dying for, you could say! Lol!

First, despite the cover look, please don't go thinking this has anything whatsoever to do with Twilight. Yes, it's a vampire book, yes it's YA, but please, please don't play that comparison game. If you do, you will be disappointed. And second, can we also bask in the sheer size of this beauty?! It's nearly 600 pages and it's all amazing!!

We pretty much know that this a vampire novel, but I will forewarn you that our heroine Grace, isn't in on the vampire secret right away. In fact, it's just past the halfway mark that things start to make more sense to her and the secrets are revealed, so know that the pacing to this one is a bit slower. It's not a high stakes, action packed adventure. Crave is more subtle than that. In fact there were times I was starting to doubt that vampire were involved, like maybe it was a psych out or something. The answer was forthcoming and yet with a twist of shocking too because WHOA!

Now let's get into what this plot is all about! Grace is our heroine, a teenage girl who had her world upended when her parents died and her next of kin is an uncle who works at a private school in Alaska! Still dealing with her grief, Grace doesn't quite know what to expect from everything. Her cousin, Macy is definitely one of the sweetest people ever! She makes Grace feel right at home trying to get things ready for her inevitable stay and she thinks of the littlest of things to make sure Grace has nothing to worry about.

That is until Grace meets Jaxon, the all around most popular/mysterious/brooding boy at school. And the welcome she receives from him is anything but warm and welcoming. In fact, he tells her to leave the school entirely. But Grace is my kind of heroine and instead of backing down and cowering, she gets in his face and I think that's when their chemistry started because Jaxon is suffering too and tries to hide it. The next few days has Grace getting into some dangerous mishaps and then Jaxon usually appears to help her out of said predicaments. He's her brooding knight in shiny armor, you could say.

Like I mentioned before the pacing here is very...steady. It's not fast, some might call it slow and while it isn't the pacing I usually go for, I was eating up the pages! Because there's the bizarre happenings that seem to follow Grace, and then there's the fact that you kind of want to know exactly what all the big secrets about this school are. Yes, we know it's vampires but there's always more to it than that and THAT is what made the pages just fly by for me.

Grace was a really fun kind of heroine. Sure she had some quirky moments, but honestly, who doesn't when they're a teenager? It was find of fun when she interacted with Jaxon because you add quirky with brooding and you get an interesting result. The fact that we know ahead of time that things aren't quite normal at this school didn't make me think ill of her either. Occasionally, Grace would wonder about things happening at school with students or whatnot, but someone, usually Macy, was always quick with a reason. That is until she is let in on the student body's "quirks."

The romance between Grace and Jaxon might remind some of Twilight, and honestly those books didn't leave much of an impression for me, so other than that slow to start friendship to romance I can't really make much comment on its likeness or not. But I will say that the relationship that slowly develops between Grace and Jaxon was definitely a heart-racing kind! Yes, it's a slow-burn romance but those have always been a favorite of mine! And there were hints of a possible love triangle, but I am not fully convinced that that is what's going on. So I feel 98% confident in saying that there is no love triangle. But you know, it's only book 1!

There's even more mystery going on in this one that starts to become more apparent after the halfway mark, so basically once Grace gets in the "know," more mysterious things happen and some vague explanations start coming too. The ending was one that I started to think about being a possibility but of course I wasn't quite on par with all the whys and hows, but it basically blew my mind! Especially the very last chapter because WHOA! I MEAN FREAKING WHOA!!!!!! This was not something I had anticipated AT ALL and now I have ALL the questions because my mind was blown!

Crave is not for the faint-hearted. This is a long book, a deliciously long book filled with intriguing characters and a page turning storyline that will leave you breathless! There's a spine-tingling romance between the star-crossed lovers and mysteries and secrets galore! The next book is bound to be equally, if not more amazing! This is the book vampire lovers have been waiting for! I have missed my dear friends of the night and having Wolff's vampires in my life was everything I could've hoped for! Crave is truly a book for the vampire girls/boys of this world! A group I am happy to be apart of!


Overall Rating 5/5 stars


Crave releases April 7, 2020