by Patricia Lynne
Createspace
8th September 2011
Only surviving isn't that easy. The hunt for blood can be tricky when humans know to fear the night. Desire sits on the edge of his mind, urging him to become the monster humans think he is. Vampire Forces, a special branch of police, is determined to turn every vampire to ash. Tommy included.
The only human Tommy can trust is his twin brother. A bond connects them, and with Danny's help, Tommy starts to understand the human world he struggles to survive in. He'll learn what friendships means and feel the sting of betrayal, find that sometimes the worst monsters are very human, and come to understand that family means more than blood.
Tommy just wants to survive and he knows what he needs to do. But with the number of humans that mean more to him than a meal growing, he'll learn there's more to life than simple survival. He'll discover being human doesn't mean being a human.
I cannot explain how much I LOVED this book!!
Patricia Lynne is an amazing storyteller and this book is
one of the most thought provoking I have read in a long time. Her take on the
vampire genre was completely unique, she created a species that we are meant to
fear and that fear remained until the very last page and at its core this story
is about the prejudices that we face as a society today. This book is fast
paced, exciting and completely heart-breaking.
This isn’t a story about love, it’s a story about humanity and what it
takes to be human. Lynne also covered topics such as child abuse, rape,
self-harm and depression in a respectful way and I have to admire her for
that.
I loved that Lynne created a story that made me question
humanity and whether survival really is more important that love. It also had
me asking the question, Is it right to fear something because we don’t fully
understand it? I also loved the twin bond which became the sole reason Tommy
didn’t lose all of his humanity, it was an amazing concept and it completely
blew me away.
Tommy’s character is unique and I was shocked over and over
again by his thoughts, feelings and actions. He kept me guessing until the very
end. I loved that Lynne made Tommy the bad guy in the story and had all the
other characters fear him for a time and then she threw in a human that Tommy
described as a monster, which created the question; if vampires truly existed,
would their crimes be any worse than human crimes?
He was almost childlike in nature because once he awakened
as a vampire, he had to start from scratch and learn how to be human from the
very beginning, he discovered what it was like to love, feel betrayed, hate,
fear and the difference between right and wrong. He had to learn all the
lessons that we do from birth and Lynne made each situation Tommy found himself
in completely believable and relatable. I loved being able to watch Tommy grow
as a character over several decades, it wasn’t a ridiculous amount of time and
it was easy to see how his character changed emotionally even when he didn’t
change physically. He realised that sometimes love is more important that
survival.
The only part of the book I didn’t fall in love with was the
ending and only because I didn’t feel completely satisfied. I feel like I still
need closure on Tommy’s story and I still need to know how it ended for him,
including his thoughts and feelings. Although I did love how the ending was
written from another POV, it was refreshing and gave even more of an insight
into the world Tommy found himself living in. This book will have you laughing
and crying along with Tommy and the wonderful, strange and sad situations he
finds himself in.
- Stephanie
