Afterlight (Dark Ink Chronicles, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Nov 03, 2010 Francesca the Fierce (Under the Covers Book Blog) rated it liked it

Shelves: books-read-2011, vampires, genre-paranormal-romance, witches-shaman-magic

This review was posted at Under The Covers

3.5 Stars

Riley Poe is pretty kick ass! She has turned her life around and gone from being a junkie and being completely in with the wrong crowd and doing the wrong things, to going to college, owning a tattoo shop and being a well known artist in Savannah. This in big part thanks to Preacher and his wife who took her and her brother Seth in and helped her along just a bit so she could find her way after her mother was killed.

The premise for this book is This review was posted at Under The Covers

3.5 Stars

Riley Poe is pretty kick ass! She has turned her life around and gone from being a junkie and being completely in with the wrong crowd and doing the wrong things, to going to college, owning a tattoo shop and being a well known artist in Savannah. This in big part thanks to Preacher and his wife who took her and her brother Seth in and helped her along just a bit so she could find her way after her mother was killed.

The premise for this book is Riley's brother, Seth and his buddies apparently release two brother vampires who were captured centuries ago. While doing that these vampires make the teenagers into their minions, and they slowly begin a transformation to becoming vampires which will be complete when they make their first kill in about a month's time.

Riley never knew these creatures of the Afterlight existed but as she sees the changes in her brother and worries about him, Preacher takes her to meet the Dupres. The local family of vampires, who centuries ago made a pact with the locals they wouldn't drink from a human or harm a human as long as they were supplied blood by other means (i.e. blood bank bags). Preacher also confesses that she has a rare blood type, which is like a magnet and a drug to vampires, and that he has been giving her special herbs her whole life to mask that blood so no vampires would be attracted to her and killer her.

The Dupres assign their oldest son Eli to watch over Riley while she helps them infiltrate in Savannah's underground, which she used to be a part of, in order to recapture these two rogue vampires before the full moon so that her brother can be saved and not turned.

Except the magnetism and attraction Eli and Riley feel for each other has nothing to do with her blood and everything to do with her.

It took a while for me to get into this book. I had a bit of an issue with all "Twilight" type references. I felt like I was reading an adult (and at times, very adult, much to my liking) version of the Twilight book. To list a few:
- Riley's blood being a drug to vampires, which they can scent and have to show a lot of restraint not to drink from her.
- The pact between the Dupres and the locals and if they were to bite anyone (even Riley, and no, biting doesn't automatically change them into vampires) they would break the pact and they would be executed.
- Josie is the weird, quirky younger sister, and her personality, comments, actions are almost too much like Alice. Almost the whole Dupre family could be characterized with the Cullens.
- The ending still leaves us with Riley being wanted by one of the bad vampires and he's coming back for her. Sounded too much like Victoria.

All of that aside, I will read the second book in this trilogy, I want to see where the story goes from here. This could've been a much better story had the author worked out all the similarities and just made up some other ways to fill in those details, since those things didn't really make the story. My rating might've been different then as the book and the story were not too bad after about halfway through, and I really like the hero and heroine. ...more

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Nov 08, 2010 Yulia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: vampires, romance, paranormal, urban-fantasy

I liked it, probably becaused the main character is different from other because of her past.
The beggining was really slow for me, most of it was streched on showing how she lives and a big chunk on her relationship with her brother going down, and a little on someone stalking her. Now that I think about it, it seems like it dragged on and on.
Ater Eli and his family actually showing up with names and all it went a little faster, and her relationship with Eli was understandable and I liked it (th ...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Mrs. Badass marked it as to-read

Shelves: nov-10-release

Nov 22n

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Jun 23, 2010 Catherine Banks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, adult-fantasy, vampires, read-in-2011

This book keeps you glued to it! There's so much to the story and you don't want it to end. I read the excerpt at the back for the next book and I'm a little disappointed with some of the decisions Riley's making, she makes similiar ones in this book. I know it adds to the storyline, but it's sort of irritating.

Overall I loved this book. Definitely a must read for fantasy/paranormal romance lovers. ...more

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