Review--A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

On the evening of Sofia Claremont's seventeenth birthday, she is sucked into a nightmare from which she cannot wake.

A quiet evening walk along a beach brings her face to face with a dangerous pale creature that craves much more than her blood.

She is kidnapped to an island where the sun is eternally forbidden to shine.
An island uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet. She wakes here as a slave, a captive in chains.

Sofia's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn when she is the one selected out of hundreds of girls to join the harem of Derek Novak, the dark royal Prince.

Despite his addiction to power and obsessive thirst for her blood, Sofia soon realizes that the safest place on the island is within his quarters, and she must do all within her power to win him over if she is to survive even one more night.

Will she succeed? ...or is she destined to the same fate that all other girls have met at the hands of the Novaks?

OOOOOOMG! I bought Bella Forrest's A Shade of Vampire awhile back, because I read a review that made it sound amazing, and oh how right it was! This ebook, despite being 150 pages, was absolutely amazing!

I am like still gushing over it and it's so weird because it was really quite short. A one day read, but I was so entranced with this story from the beginning! True, it has a little Stockholm Syndrome going on, since it's obvious Sofia is going to fall for Derek, but isn't that usually the way in fiction. And truth be told, Derek didn't necessarily kidnap Sofia, that was his brother.

Short end of the story is that Sofia is kidnapped on her birthday by Lucas, a vampire who brings her to this island where a witch always keeps it night so the vampires have free reign. There are some humans around, but they are slaves, all humans are slaves to the vampires. Sofia is to be apart of a harem of vampires to young Derek, he's eighteen in appearances but really centuries old. He has just awakened from a deep sleep...exactly why he was under this spell, I didn't quite grasp, nor was it fully explained. But he is too rule the vampires and try to stop the brewing war between vampires and hunters. Obviously, the hunters are "bad guys" who want to kill the vampires, and these vampires for the most part live peacefully on their secluded island...and occasionally kidnap teenage girls and other humans, but whatever!

Then begins a part Beauty and the Beast spinoff. Sofia is in a sense Derek's prisoner, but when he first lays eyes on her, it's during an act of kindness that touches him. Derek soon becomes enamored with Sofia and wants her with him all the time. But surprisingly, he's very gentlemanly like about the whole thing. He doesn't throw himself on her and demand things from her. And Sofia does have a bit of backbone in the matter too.

Back at home she was the quiet one, the typical YA heroine for paranormal reads. She had a best friend, Ben, who she always wanted something more from, but he never reciprocated. Her constant worrying over him while on this island became a touch annoying, since he did forget her birthday. I couldn't understand what she saw in him.

This truly was an awesome read! Sofia is determined to leave the island and The Shade--what they call the vampire community, but she doesn't realize that she is on an island and escape is basically impossible. 

To add to her troubles, there's an enemy on this island. One who has their eyes set on claiming Sofia for their self--yes using improper English to describe one person, because I don't want to reveal their identity or gender, but it's pretty obvious who that person is! 

There was definitely a slow building romance, which I always love! Derek though I think fell a little faster for her than she for him. Which didn't even really annoy me. I think vampires falling for someone quickly is the only example of insta love that's acceptable, since they've generally been around for centuries! And thankfully, as I said, Sofia didn't fall for him right away, so there's wasn't a total case of insta love.

This was told in both Derek and Sofia's points of view, first person and I found that enjoyable. I think I am more apt to enjoy first person than third, but do still enjoy third as well. But I loved going back and forth between the two and getting a sense of what they think of everything that's going on.

The ending was both shocking and not. I guess because I could tell where things might be leading, but it is still always nice to read and enjoy! I definitely have to go back to Amazon and buy the rest of this series to date, because I was so not prepared for how magical and enjoyable this read was going to be and can only be tickled with happiness--see I am so giddy over this read I am spouting off weird sayings that I don't normally use in reviews--by how it all turned out!

The only things that bugged me about this read and what knocked off half a point was Sofia constantly worrying about what Ben was doing back at home. How worried he must be or what he thought of her disappearance when the dude was kind of a jerk to her. And the other minor bit was there was a lot of "?!" usage. I don't mind the using of both endmarks, but to see them a lot throughout the read kind of nagged at me. It took away the importance of the questioning outrage ?! stands for.

If you're a Paranormal YA fan and a lover of all things vampire, you will definitely enjoy this book!! If you love sort of spinoffs/reimaginings of Beauty and the Beast, than I think it's safe to say you might enjoy this too! It truly was a fabulous read!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars

This read was read for the Clean Out Your E-Reader Challenge