This did not work for me at all. Mostly because it suffered from so many annoying romance and vampire novel cliches. Insta-love! Blandly perfect love interest and main character! Vampires with random powers! Oh noes I don’t want to bone you because I might bite you!!!11 Actually, in a lot of ways, including the aforementioned cliches, the book was reminiscent of Twilight. It also had the same overly simplistic good vs bad vampires and a general disdain towards humans. (Seriously, Alec. You got over the ‘My forced boyfriend eats my fellow humans’ thing pretty fast. And have all of zero respect for those pesky human laws you swore to uphold by becoming a cop. What’s up with that?)
There is a plot in this though! And it doesn’t show up late to the party after stopping at the bank and getting McDonalds! (Freakin’ Twilight.) It just suffers from not being fully fleshed out in the “show vs tell” department in favor of our lovebirds making bedroom eyes and awkwardly hitting on each other. It’s pretty gross and eye-roll worthy since they have zero romantic development or chemistry by the time we start getting beaten over the head with it. Alec takes the whole “fated” forced insta-love thing waaay to easily for someone who has just lost all emotional agency. He pays a little lip-service to the whole ordeal, but it always seems like just that- lip service. He never seems truly conflicted about it, making the whole relationship seem further forced and hollow. I liked the weird alternate history stuff, though, but wish it was incorporated more gracefully than giant info dumps.
As for the narration, I seem to be the odd one out here too. I hated it. Alec’s voice in particular and the stuff that was not in any specific characters’ voices were super annoying. Everything seemed to end up said in this overly dramatic husky way that made it feel like the narrator was trying to convince you that something dramatic or emotional was being said or happening, even when it wasn’t. For example, in the beginning Alec is surprised that he is not freaking out over the strange turn his life has suddenly taken. The way his voice is done, though, makes it seem like he really is about to have a mental breakdown, even though the text does not support this.
However, there was a silver lining to the narration. His accented voices were actually really good. They were pretty thick, without sounding cartoonish, and added variety to the narration. So there’s that.
I’ll probably pass on the sequels though. 🙁