Crave

Laura J. Burns & Melinda Metz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for young readers

Publish Date:  already out

Format: e-book

Series:  Crave

Shay McGuire has been sick her whole life.  Her day-to-day routine involves frequent checks to make sure she is feeling okay and not going to have an episode.  She was born with a rare blood disorder that nobody can figure out.  She’s been to numerous doctors.  Her last doctor, Dr. Martin Kuffner, became her step-father.  She has to get blood transfusions frequently.  Her best friend, Olivia Willett, knows Shay and the signs that she is starting to feel sick again.   When Shay passed out at school, heading to the library with Olivia and her boyfriend Kaz, Martin comes to pick her up.  He’s all business when it comes to Shay.  Asking her about how she feels, symptom-wise.  Shay’s mother, Emma was always worried about her and didn’t want her to try anything new or “exert” herself.  Martin knows how Emma worries and doesn’t always tell her everything that is happening with Shay.

When Martin tries a new treatment or transfusion on Shay, she starts to feel different.  After receiving this new treatment, Shay feels stronger and tries new things, like attend PE and run.    In her mind, she just wants to live life before it runs out on her.  During the transfusion of this new blood, she sees visions where she is somebody else.  Someone named Gabriel who is a vampire.  Through these visions, she does things that she never has before, like swim in the ocean.  Shay doesn’t understand these visions and thinks that they are her brain misfiring.  Even still, she welcomes them as they are a break of the monotony of being the “sick girl.”

Not everybody is happy about the changes that Shay demonstrates with her new-found strength.  Her mother thinks that the things she is doing is a side effect of this new treatment and wants them stopped.  This angers Shay because for the first time in her life, she felt “normal” and did “normal” teenage things.  Shay runs away to Martin’s office and finds Gabriel chained to a table there.  She cannot believe that he is real and that she hadn’t imagined him.  After rescuing Gabriel, her life turns upside down and she learns that not everyone is who they claim to be, including herself.

Having Shay be a sick girl who gained some sense of normalcy, really works in this story.  This book kept me interested from page one to the end.  I never got the feeling that I was pushing myself through to a better part in the book.

 

Shay could never do the things her friends could--never try out for sports, never go to parties, never fall in love. Because of the mysterious and incurable blood disorder she was born with, she can barely make it through three days of school a week.

But now, her doctor-turned-stepfather has a brand-new treatment that he thinks will change everything. And it does. As soon as the new blood starts pumping into Shay's veins, she has visions of a different life...Gabriel's life. She sees an orphanage, loss, fangs, blood, and lust that she can't explain.

Is Gabriel real? And if he is, could he really be what she thinks he is?

•Olivia.  Even though she can be over-bearing and Shay describes her as her “second-mother,” you can tell she really cares and comes through for Shay when she needs it most.

•The experiences that Shay has when she feels stronger.  These are normal high school experiences that she never thought she would have the chance to have.

•How everyone in the school is so accepting of Shay and help her whenever she needs it.

•Kaz.  He really is a good guy and a good friend to Shay.

•Shay’s mom, Emma.  Even though she is a little too protective of Shay at times, you can tell that she does it out of love.

•Gabriel.  His emotions are hot then cold.  There is no luke-warm with him.  He really is a good person who is struggling with inner battles of things that have happened in the past.  I’m not sure whether to put him in the I Like category, I Do Not Like category or both.  

•Martin.  He has helped Shay and Emma a lot.  Shay first describes him as a “Disney fairy god-mother.”  He is instrumental in Shay’s treatment and to be able to afford the treatment she needed.

•That people in this series have both good and bad qualities.  This makes the characters have more depth and seem more real.

 

•How people always treat Shay as a “sick girl” and don’t trust her to know herself and when she can and cannot do things.  This includes Emma, Shay’s mother, who thinks she knows Shay better than Shay knows herself.

•The characters that have both a good side and a bad side.  Even though this makes the characters more real, it’s hard to know who to trust in this story.  It's difficult when you like and not like a story for the same thing.

•Ernst.  He is one of the vampires and is essentially Gabriel’s father.  He hates humans.  Period.  There isn’t any gray area with him.  It’s black and white.

 Tentative Publish Date: September 20, 2011

This is the second book in the crave series.  This is the Goodreads synopsis:

Gabriel and Shay are convinced that they can make their relationship work. Knowing that Shay is half-vampire, Gabriel thinks that his coven will embrace her as one of their own, but instead they view her as an abomination, a thing that doesn’t belong in either world. And they want her dead. Now Gabriel must make the ultimate decision - watch his love be killed by his coven or defy the people closest to him, the people he has spent centuries with to save her.