Sacrifice

Laura J. Burns & Melinda Metz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publish Date: September 20, 2011

Version: galley grab e-book

Series:  Crave

Shay trusted Gabriel when he said that if he brought her to her family compound, that she would be safe.  Ever since finding out that she was Sam’s daughter, half vampire and needing vampire blood to live, she had hoped that she would find acceptance.  She never suspected that his family would treat her like an abomination.  Gabriel never thought about that either.  Here Shay was a prisoner once again.

Gabriel cannot believe how his family is acting.  All his thoughts are on Shay and how he must rescue her.   He tries to convince his family that Shay being Sam’s daughter, she is one of the family.  He tells Ernst, his father, about how Martin locked him up for a blood mule, and Ernst wants to use Shay as bait to lure Martin there so they can get their revenge.  Ernst and the rest of the family are appalled when they learn that Gabriel loves Shay.  This doesn’t bode well for him or for Shay.   In this book, you learn whether or not their love is strong enough to bear the scrutiny of Gabriel’s family and his past.

I thought this book was a good sequel to Crave. I’m not sure if there are going to be any more books in this series, but it will be interesting to read them.  I thought that Sacrifice was well written and the characters have good personalities to them.  I don’t like them all, but that is what makes them unique.  This book has a good assortment of mixed feelings, including the war between family, what is right and the person you love.  I like the balance that Sacrifice and Crave possesses of these emotions.

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.

•The communion the family members have with each other.

•The characters.  They all have their own background story and are well-developed.

•The feelings that Gabriel has towards humans as a result of Shay.

•Finding out more about the story with Emma and Sam.

•Emma.  Shay’s mother.  She does everything for Shay.  That doesn’t stop in this novel.  In the beginning, she has flown to Miami thinking Shay was there.

•Ernst.  Again, this book has multiple characters in which you love to hate and hate to love them.  They are both good and bad and Ernst is one of them.  He is the “father” of the family that Gabriel belongs to.

•This is another like/dislike.  The prejudices that the characters have: I don’t like them, but I like how they are dealt with in this story.  That is all I’m going to say so that I don’t spoil anything.

•How Gabriel’s family treated Shay.

•Martin.  Again, he has made it onto my lists, this time on the opposite side.  At the end of Crave, you learn that Martin is doing this all for himself, for glory and not for Shay.  That continues on in this story. 

•The Blood rituals.  I don’t know where Ernst came up with or learned these rituals.

•Some of Gabriel’s family.  It is understandable why they think and act the way that they do, but that doesn’t excuse it.