Nightshifted

Title: Nightshifted

Author: Cassie Alexander

Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks         

Publish Date:  22 May 2012

Pages: 352

ISBN:  978-0312553395

Source:  Bought

Genre:  YA, paranormal, vampires, werewolves

Series:  Edie Spence

Other books in series:  Moonshifted (27 November 2012)

Rating: Loved

From debut author Cassie Alexander comes a spectacular new urban fantasy series where working the nightshift can be a real nightmare.

Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine—from vamps and were-things to zombies and beyond...

Edie’s just trying to learn the ropes so she can get through her latest shift unscathed.  But when a vampire servant turns to dust under her watch, all hell breaks loose. Now she’s haunted by the man’s dying words—Save Anna—and before she knows it, she’s on a mission to rescue some poor girl from the undead. Which involves crashing a vampire den, falling for a zombie, and fighting for her soul. Grey’s Anatomy was never like this.

Who takes care of the paranormal when they get sick?  Edie Spence is a nurse on Y4, the unit that takes care of them.  It is a secret floor in County Hospital that not too many people know about.  Edie is just trying to survive and learn the ropes, when “Mr. November” turns to dust before her eyes.  His last words were “save Anna.”  Now, it is up to Edie to figure out (1) who Anna is, (2) what she needs saving from and (3) how to save her.

Feeling guilty over the death of Mr. November, Edie sets out to figure out who he was (Mr. November was his alias because they couldn’t identify him) and his connection to Anna.  This is more challenging than what Edie has first anticipated.  Meanwhile, she has her brother calling her for money.  Her brother, who is the reason she is working on Y4 for less pay than she was making before.  What Edie doesn’t realize is that while she is digging into the identity of both Mr. November and Anna, this will involve her in the paranormal world like she has never known, or wanted.

What will happen to Edie Spence?  Will she rescue Anna?  Will she get into trouble for her involvement in her release?

I didn’t have to stick around to give the report to day shift. There’s no report to give when your patient’s become dead.

When I first heard that this was centered on a nurse who took care of paranormal patients, I was excited to read this.  Being a nurse, I had hoped that it wouldn’t be like the TV shows that depict nursing as something that it is clearly not.  I wasn’t disappointed in this book.  There were moments of hilarity in it with quotes that I showed to my co-workers.  Edie Spence is a well-written character.  I like the way that Alexander has written her.  I don’t like medical dramas or stories very often because they sugarcoat what the profession is about.  In Nightshifted, you don’t get that.  That is what made it appealing to me.

Now that I spoke on the nursing aspect, the paranormal stuff in the book was just as good.  There were dragons, vampires, ghosts, and more.  I liked that things were different in this book.  You don’t often hear about paranormal beings getting sick or having diseases, so this was a refreshing take on a genre that is popular and sometimes repetitive.  I’m anxious to read Moonshifted, which is centered around werewolves, when it comes out in November.

…anything that fell on the floor anywhere in the hospital was always suspect. Somedays there wasn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world to chase after a dropped pen.

Nurses are natural kleptos.You don’t want to be in a room without enough supplies, so every time you walk past the med-cart you pocket another saline flush. By the end of the shift you can look like a chipmunk if you’re not careful. Some days it’s hard to remember that the gum at the end of the grocery checkout aisle isn’t there just for you.