Midnight to Sunrise, Rebecca Axelrod

 

Genre: Fantasy (vampires), YA

Rating: 3 stars

This books starts as two stories:

Nevaeh is a high school junior in Ohio.  She lives with her mom, is a cheerleader, does well in school (despite a horrible teacher) and has a steady boyfriend.  Her dad disappeared mysteriously two years before, and Nevaeh tries to make her life as normal seeming as possible, when all she wants to do is read vampire books..  On the first day of the new school year, Nevaeh meets the mysterious new boy in school, Ian.  It's instant attraction.  Soon she is sneaking around to meet him, dreading having to tell her Mom and her boyfriend.

The other part of the book is the story that Nevaeh's mom tells her as a little girl. It's early 1900s New Orleans and after years of abuse at the hand of his father, Lukas kills him and runs away.  He meets a woman who shows him that he can be more, and she transforms him into a Vampire.  She tells him that Angels created Vampires to protect humans, but that at some point, the Vampires rebelled.  One Angel showed them how to make more Vampires, and ever since, the Angels have been trying to eradicate all Vampires. But Lukas isn't right for the Vampire life - he is too nice.  Wracked with guilt over having to kill humans, Lukas saves one and falls in love.  But it isn't a happy ending for him and his love and now he must hide from both the Vampires and the Angels.

This book is the first in a series, so there are many questions (why Nevaeh's teacher is so awful to her, for one) that don't get answered, so I won't bring them into this review since I assume they will be addressed in the next book(s).  Overall, I enjoyed the story of Lukas more than Nevaeh's story.  I didn't like that she was sneaking around behind her boyfriend's back.  I know it happens, but it didn't make me like her.  And we don't see Ian and Nevaeh fall in love enough.  It was kind of rushed, which makes it seem more like insta-love than forbidden passion.  Her boyfriend started out seeming like a great guy and then turned into a controlling jerk.  It was inconsistent.  Also, her mother at the end of the book and the scene in her family room just didn't gel for me.  It was too out of character.  .

I didn't have any problems with Lukas' story. Lukas's story was full of action - it was a unique twist on the vampire lore and I flew through those pages.  I would actually have liked more of his story from the discovery at the hospital to present day.  The ending of the book was very fast paced and that is when the two stories merge.

The book could use a good proofread (commas are missing everywhere, which makes it distracting to read), and perhaps a bit of editing, but the overall story isn't bad.  It leaves you on a cliff hanger ending, which leaves me interested as to how the plot would advance in book 2. 

It's a decent start to a series, but I hope that in book two, Nevaeh comes off as more likeable.

Thank you to the author for providing me a copy of the book for my honest review.