In Rebecca Maizel's debut novel, she's taken a popular age old myth and created something fresh, intense and captivating. The tale of vampires have been used so much though out history with so many distinctions and variations that I thought I'd seen and read it all. But instead of following Lenah through her life being changed into a vampire, we experience Lenah changed back into a human after five hundred years of being a vampire. And not just any vampire, one of the meanest, baddest vampire out there, a vampire queen. After her first love Rhode, the vampire who changed her, under went the fatal act to turn her back into a human. Lenah is left in her 16 year old body with her all of her memories to go through living life as normal human girl at one of the most prestigious boarding schools on the east coast, Wickham Academy. Maizel had me from the very first chapter with Lenah waking up in her human body all the way through to the end. There was so much intensity with Lenah adjusting to her new life experiencing old and new things. While surviving high school and all the drama that comes with it and trying to escape her evil past and her vampire coven out to bring her back. On top of all that Lenah has to deal with the intense feelings she feels for the popular human Justin. Maizel also captured me with her well written story and characters both main and secondary, each character, from Lenah's friend Tony to her other vampire love Vicken to the antagonizing Tracy and her posse. I loved how I was able to really understand Lenah, through flashbacks of her past as a evil deadly vampire, which made her transformation and regaining her humanity so mesmerizing. I really enjoyed the friendship with Tony and all of her romances each being intense and important to Lenah's life and adding so much to the story. The maturity of the writing and seeing what Lenah was internally going through was great. This was an amazing read filled with drama, intrigue, action and romance. I would definably recommend this story to readers ready for a fresh new twist in the vampire tale.
