Blood Born
Author: Renee Lake
Publication Date: 16th July 2019
Goodreads | Amazon
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
*Finished copy provided by the author in exchange for an honest review*
Maddie West is excited about the new adventure’s college life promises. She dreams of rallies, weird roommates and challenging classes. She expects to have fun, play house with her girlfriend and make new lifelong friends. All while keeping an eye on her terminally ill twin brother. What she doesn’t expect is a mystery and tragedy within her first semester. Is there a monster preying upon the people at her college?
Will she betray her friends and succumb to temptation? Can they band together and fight the darkens? Or is the darkness that surrounds her not the enemy…. but her only ally?’
*Trigger warning: this book contains a journal entry depicting sexual assault*
This book is a genderbent modern day retelling of Dracula by Bram Stoker, the story follows Maddie (Mina) as she starts studying at Humboldt State university with her girlfriend Jo (Jonathan), while attending the university they are introduced to professor Valora Dulcara (Dracula).
Despite the interesting and original premise I felt this story just kind of fell flat at times. Many of the side characters just seemed quite interchangeable and all the characters just had such bizarre reactions to things. Like I get that story about a vampire professor isn’t going to be realistic but some of things were just so out there that I truly just didn’t understand the thought process at all.
I think one of my biggest problems with this story is how much the the author seemed to want the reader to root for Maddie and Valora, despite the fact that they are both just terrible people (or vampire in Valora’s case). Maddie’s girlfriend is sexually assaulted and nearly gang raped at one point and it’s just written off as not that bad (a view that isn’t challenged at all within the story itself, I think one of the character’s actually says something like ‘it could have been worse’). Yet Jo lying about liking a book is deemed to be truly terrible and evil.
One thing I did like was the story about Valora and her daughters and I’d rather have just read about that to be honest as opposed the story about Maddie, Valora and Jo.
Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts on Blood Born in the comments
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