Blood Fever

Title: Blood Fever

Author: Veronica Wolff

Publisher: New American Library

Publish Date:  7 August 2012

Pages: 290

ISBN:  978-0-451-23703-3

Source:  unrequested from publisher

Genre:  YA, romance, vampires

Series:  The Watchers

Other books in series: Isle of Night, Vampire’s Kiss, The Keep (4 June 2013)

Rating: Loved

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME—EVEN IF HOME IS WHERE THE DEAD LIVE...

It’s the start of the fall semester, and a new crop of Acari and Trainees have descended on the Isle of Night. Watcher training has intensified, and Drew has a new roommate named Mei-Ling. But Mei-Ling harbors a dangerous secret that drove the vampires to abduct her against her will. Drew knows she shouldn’t get involved, but she can’t seem to leave her roommate to fend for herself.

Luckily, Drew has other things on her mind—like vampire Carden. A blood bond to a brawny, eighteenth-century Scottish bad boy tends to preoccupy a girl. And though she’s still figuring out what this bond means, one thing has become clear: She craves him in a major way.

But then bodies start turning up on the island. All the evidence points to the existence of a rogue vampire, and the sinister vampire Alcántara is gunning for Carden, even though Drew has proof that Carden had nothing to do with the murders. Now she has to find the true killer—without endangering Carden, Mei-Ling, or herself…

What does Acari Drew do when she is secretly bonded to a vampire, has feelings for Ronan that she doesn’t understand, has another master vampire after her and gets a new roommate?  Drew isn’t finished with her training on Eyja næturinnar aka The Isle of Night.  She is training to become a watcher, who will help protect the vampires.  The training is intense and a lot of girls have died, including Drew’s old roommate, which made her the only occupant in her room.

Then she gets a new roommate, Mei-Ling.  She is different than the other girls on the Isle of Night.  First of all, she is young; the youngest one there.  Second, she didn’t come willingly.  She was forced to come.  Drew is trying to figure out why.  Why would the vampires risk exposure to bring this girl here?  What is so important about Mei-Ling?   At first Mei-Ling is standoffish and this just intensifies Drew’s curiosity.

There are other stressors in Drew’s life on the island.  People are being killed and drained of their blood.  This is being done without permission and that is punishable by death.  Master Alcántara thinks that is the works of the vampire that they rescued in Vampire’s Kiss, Carden McCloud.   Drew was a part of that rescue and has a feeling that Alcántara didn’t want him rescued.  She tries to stay away from McCloud to not draw suspicion to him, but there is the blood bond that will prevent them from being apart.

Who is leaving the bodies on the island?  How will Drew figure this out while trying to protect Mei-Ling and McCloud?  What will happen between Drew, Alcántara and McCloud?

When I received this book in the mail, I was excited.  I had previously read and reviewed Isle of Night and Vampire’s Kiss and loved both of them.  Blood Fever was no different.  I like how Drew feels that she is responsible for people: Mei-Ling and McCloud.  She feels that she needs to protect them.  You don’t see much of Ronan in this book and that might be the only drawback.  I really liked his character.  I liked Mei-Ling and that she appeared so innocent in the book.   She has a secret that she is protecting and Drew really wants to find this out because then she might understand what the big interest in her is.

The ending of this book left me wanting more.  It was written well, but I didn’t like it.  This is what I felt like:

Drawn by Aaron Florento

 I cannot wait for the continuation of this story in The Keep. 

Vampire's Kiss

Publisher: New American Libarary/Penguin group

Publish Date: 6 March 2012

Source: ARC from publisher

Series: The Watchers

Other Books in the Series: Isle of Night, Blood Fever (August 2012)

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE PARTNERED WITH A VAMPIRE, YOU HAVE TO WORK THE NIGHT SHIFT.

By her wits, blood, and sacrifice, so far Drew has survived the intensive training on the Isle of Night. As a second-year Acari, her ultimate goal is to become a Watcher, and now she has a shot at her first mission. Except nothing is as it seems. The vampire Alcántara is as sinister as he is sexy, Ronan is more distant than ever, and it turns out there are other vampires out there. Bad ones.

Ancient, bloodthirsty, and powerful, these undead are really old school. They’ve captured one of the Watcher vamps and are torturing him for information. The only chance to save him is to infiltrate a major summit the baddies are holding on their own island. There will be mortals there, serving as butlers, maids, and various hired help. Drew had better brush up on her skills as a serving girl, because she’s about to go undercover…

But, when their vampire prisoner turns out to be a gorgeous bad boy, Drew’s first mission quickly turns into more than she bargained for…

Annelise Drew aka Acari Drew has won the Directorate Award competition and things return to “normal” on Eyja næturinnar or the Isle of Night after the competition.  Annelise’s prize for winning is that she gets to accompany the vampire Alcántara on a mission off the island.  She had been looking forward to this because she is planning on escaping the Isle of Night.  That is her main focus.  Alcántara shows greater interest in her and Annelise is sure that he has interfered with things in the past.  She has to take these strange classes, including ballroom dancing, in order to prepare for their mission, which she has no details of.

The one thing that makes her happy on the Isle of Night is Ronan.   After her victory in the Directorate Award competition, he seems more distant than ever.  Annelise, being a genius, likes to think things through.  She wonders why Alcántara is showing favoritism toward her and what is going on with her and Ronan?

When Annelise finally finds out the details of the mission, she is happy that it is finally coming near and understands the reasoning for some of the classes she was forced to take.  She learns that there are good and bad vampires and they are going to try to save one of the good ones.  She is going undercover as a serving girl to ascertain the location of the vampire that they are rescuing.  She plans to escape after helping rescue this vampire.  Things don’t always go as planned.  After this mission, the lines between good and bad are very hazy.  The vampire she was saving, Carden McCloud, isn’t what she expected.

I thought this was a great sophomore book in the Watcher series.  It was interesting to read.  Wolff really draws you into the story.  There was a few times where I would gasp because of what happened.  A lot of my questions were answered from Isle of Night, but so many more were raised with this book.  I am really looking forward to Blood Fever coming out in August 2012!

On the cover is a male, who I’m presuming to be Carden McCloud and Annelise.  There is also a monastery, and I’m presuming this to be where the mission will take placed.  Again, I like the colors and found myself looking at the cover quite a few times while reading the book.  I especially like that you can see their eyes so well.

 

•Annelise Drew.  I like her attitude.  She is a fighter.  She has been through an abusive relationship with her father and ended up at the Isle of Night because of her IQ.  She questions why she has to learn all the stuff that they make her do, but she does it because she wants out of there.  She makes friends in Yasuo and Emma and that is unexpected for her.  She doesn’t know how to be a friend.

•Yasuo and Emma.  Annelise’s friends.  Even though she is new at friendship and doesn’t always say or do the right thing, they are loyal to her. 

•Josh.  I wanted to talk about Josh in the Isle of Night review, but I thought I would save it for Vampire’s Kiss.  He is Annelise’s German Etiquette tutor.  He is from Australia and is training to become a vampire.  He has good standards and is a gentleman.  He helps Annelise in more ways than one.   I am interested to see what happens to Josh further on in the Watchers series.

•Carden McCloud.  He is the vampire that they are rescuing from the bad vampires.  He makes snarky comments.

 

• Alcántara.  He is a vampire and is just creepy.  Every time I would read about him, it would give me the chills. 

•The Isle of Night.  I do not like the things that happen there between the Acari, vampires, tracers and proctors.

•The Bad Vampires.  They are “bad.”

Don't forget to check out my contest where you can win a personalized, autographed ARC of Vampire's Kiss from Veronica Wolff.  Unfortunately, this contest is restricted to US only.

Isle of Night

Publisher: New American Library / Penguin

Publish Date: already out

Series: The Watchers

Other books in Series: Vampires Kiss (3/6/2012); Blood Fever (08/2012)

Is life offering fewer and fewer options? Then join the dead.

When Annelise goes off to college, it means good riddance to her abusive father and stepmother, but a bureaucratic screwup leaves her without a high school diploma, flat broke, and facing a future that seems more elusive than ever.  Then she meets Ronan - tall, dark, and way to seductive for her own good.  He promises Annelise a new life...if she has the courage to change the unknown.  One look at him, and she certainly has the desire.  He offers her a lift, and sure enough, accepting rides from strangers does yield surprises.

Whisked away to a mysterious island in the North Sea, Annelise is pitted against other female recruits in tests of skill, smarts, and strength.  To win is to become a member of the Watchers, a unique elite partnership with vampires that dispatches its teams on the most dangerous missions imaginable.  It's not exactly what Annelise had in mind for a new beginning, but it's livelier than the alternative.  Because on the Isle of Night, to lose a challenge doesn't mean just dishonor.  It means death.

Let the games begin.

Annelise Drew lives in Christmas, Florida with her father and her step-mother.  She cannot wait to leave this abusive home and go to University of Florida in Gainesville where she got a full scholarship.  When she gets there, things don’t go as planned.  She tries to register for classes and cannot due to a new rule that they made at her old high school: she has to pass a swim test.  Annelise, who goes by Drew, doesn’t swim.  She doesn’t know how and is afraid of the water.  It is there that she meets Ronan.  At first, she sees him in the registration office.  When she finds out she cannot register for college, she goes back out to her car and then sees Ronan again.  When her car doesn’t start, she agrees to let Ronan give her a ride.  Little does she know that the ride will change her life.

Ronan talks her into getting on a plane and traveling to Eyja næturinnar or the Isle of Night.  This is a place where Annelise will compete against other women who were specifically chosen to become a watcher.  Annelise was chosen for this because she is a genius. This is where she first learns of vampires and that they are not the cute kind that you normally see in movies.  Annelise soon realizes that it is either win or die on the Isle of Night.  They have strange rules and even stranger classes.  The culmination of this is when they have the Directorate Award competition.  Will Acari Drew (as she is called on the Isle of Night) win or die?

I origianally read Isle of Night because I was sent the sequel, Vampire’s Kisses, to review.  I don’t like to read other books in a series without starting from the beginning.  You lose a lot of what the book entails when you do that.  When I first read the first line of the synopsis, I was drawn in and anxious to read it.  I couldn’t put Isle of Night down!  It was that good.  It was nice because it had vampires in it, but it wasn’t what you normally think of vampire/ya/romance book to be like.  I think Bram Stoker would be proud of the vampires in The Watchers series.

While I was reading this book, I kept looking back at the cover.  A good cover will do just that: it will make you involve in the book.  The cover has Annelise and Ronan on it.  Below them is a castle of sorts.  I like the colors on this cover.  I also like the fact that both Annelise’s and Ronan’s eyes stand out and they look mysterious.

•Annelise Drew.  She is the main character in The Watcher series.  It starts out by describing a little of her childhood, her abusive father and how she had to overcome this along with being a genius.  It doesn’t wear her down.  She still shows good attributes, good priorities and knows what is important.  She is, mind  you, young (having just graduated from high school) and shows it in her actions sometimes.  Nevertheless, she is a good character.

•Ronan.  What can you say about Ronan?  According to the cover of the book, he is nice to look at.  He is so much more though.  Annelise gets to know him a little in the book, but there is still a lot of mystery that surrounds him.  He is her Tracer and that brings different responsibilities.  In this book, it looks as though Ronan is torn, but he tries to lead Annelise in the right direction.  He still calls her Annelise, even though he is supposed to call her Acari Drew.

•Amanda.  She is Annelise’s proctor.  She tries to make things easier for Annelise and explains things to her that she wouldn’t know otherwise.

•Yasuo and Emma.  These are the two friends that she makes while on the Isle.  They are loyal to her.

•Lilac Von Straubing.  From the very beginning, Annelise and Lilac don’t get along.  Lilac nicknamed Annelise “charity case” after a shirt she was wearing which is later shortened to “charity.”  Annelise calls her “bunny,” but later decides on another nickname.  Lilac is out to get Annelise and wants her dead.

•The Vampires.  They are eerie.

In My Mailbox

In my mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren.  I try to do this every week, but sometimes it just doesn't happen.  All links will lead you to the Goodreads description of the book.

Vampire's Kiss (The Watchers #2) by Veronica Woff - I received for review from The Penguin Group

Cracked by K.M. Walton - Won from The Story Siren  I also received bookmarks, magnet and a keychain.

Bought:
Horizon by Sopie Littlefield
Harbinger by Sarah Wilson Etienne
Isle of Night (The Watchers #1) by Veronica Wolff
The Giver by Lois Lowry