Secret Vampire - Book 1 - Review

This book was a free book on the Sony website. I didn't know anything about the author or the series, I merely got because it was FREE.

It was not the first book I read on my e-reader, but as it was free and is still freely available I decided to review it first.

The vampire genre has always been popular. My love of vampire novels started in high school when I was introduced to Anne Rice and now I can say that L.J. Smith writes a decent vamp book as well.

Secret Vampire is by no means a literary masterpiece, but the writing style is easy to read and entertaining. Smith's take is that of a secret night world consisting of witches and vampires, which is a bit different as most authors have been writing the vampire versus werewolves bit.

The tale is that of a young girl who has a crush on her best friend, who happens to be a vampire. She does not know that he is a vampire until she is diagnosed with a life threatening disease. Can you see where this is headed? He has broken a night world law by changing her, but.....they have an out. She and her brother are witches unbeknowst to them and are members of the night world anyway.

Chaos ensues when the lead fakes her death and meets her vampire's cousin. The cousin is a sketchy guy who tries to kidnap her and takes her into the secret places of the night world.

I don't want to give everything away, so I'll start with my review.

The book is entertaining, but not on the same level as the Twilight series or Anne Rice. These novels are clearly written for the teen to possibly tween level reader. Smith is not super descriptive in her writing, so much is left to the reader to imagine. The emotional connection and intensity between the two lead characters is not as strong or urgent as that of Bella and Edward.

I would have to say that I feel...meh...about this novel. It was free and fun, but I don't think I would pay money for this book. Will I look into the other books in the series....maybe.....if they're free too!

Trading in my traditional books.....

Hi, my name is Patty and I love books!! I have been an avid reader my entire life. I love the art work of the covers, the heft of a hardback, I don't even crease the spine on my paperback books....I also hate to part with a book. I have boxes and boxes of books ranging from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books to romances and anthologies. As you can imagine, I have no more room in my home for anymore books.

My interest in e-readers was peaked around this time last year. I was checking out the iPods at
Target and noticed a new display. They had a Sony E-reader out that you could play with. So I went over to check it out.

Now, I have worked at jobs that required hours of staring at a computer and have suffered the vision loss associated with that, so I was highly sceptical. To my surprise, the e-reader was very easy to read and was not hard on my eyes.

The screen as a matte finish and the pages look very similar to an actual paper page. There is also the capability to increase the font size as well. You can download a ton of books on the reader and it has increased capacity via removeable memory cards.

After playing with it for a few minutes I decided it was something I'd like to have.....but, the price was prohibitive. Coming in at $300 I just couldn't justify spending that much....so I waited. Everytime I was in the store I would go over and caress it with a sigh.

Lucky for me I'm an impatient person and I purchased it three weeks later with my Target rewards card for 10% off. YIPPEE!!!

When I got home with it I tore it open and read the directions (yes, I read directions) and was disappointed to learn that it had to charge for a few hours. After an agonizing wait of 3 hours I fired it up.

It came downloaded with a few excerpts, but the Sony eBook site had lots of free books that were available. I picked some out and loaded it up!

As I started to read the first book the reader gave me a scare and locked up! Holy crap!! Did I just waste my money on something that's not going to work???? After a few minutes of waiting for it to reboot it came back to life.

I have since learned that it cannot be rushed.

The first few pages took some getting used to. The page turns have a bit of a delay, which I had to adjust to, but other than that it was fine. I really liked the fact that it was one small page to hold as I like to read laying down in bed, so this was much lighter than balancing a big hardback over my head.

As a whole I love my Sony Reader. I even upgraded to the lighted case and can read in a darkened room without any problems.