Laura DaleoCritiques

Up until chapter 13, I thought I would be giving my LibraryThing Early Reviewers win, Once We Were Witches by Laura Daleo, four stars. After all, it was good enough that I read more at a time than I should have until my eyestrain got so bad that I was forced to read only a page or two at a time, up to ten a day. Chapters 13 and 14 left me incensed.

Raven Sagestone is adopted. Her adoptive parents have not tried to hide that from her. They've showered her with love every since they found her as a newborn abandoned near the emergency entrance at the hospital where they worked. They gave her a birth certificate and her name. They don't realize that she's a witch who can't access her powers. Raven has intricate birthmarks on her arms that look as if they were tattoos. Personally, I would not have explained that they were birthmarks when people exclaim over them. People think Raven is weird.

Someone is murdering witches.

Notes:

Chapter 1:½

Synopsis: Who am I? Who are my real parents? Why can't I use my powers? These are all questions that plague Raven Sagestone and that lead her on a quest for their answers. On her journey she meets vampires, witches, a demon, and entities who can help her find the answers she seeks - if she can stay alive.

Review: Well fine...I enjoyed this book so much that I'm going to have to read the three books that came before. The storyline is interesting, but I wanted a more in-depth examination of the characters and the settings. I'm hoping that there will be a future book that brings all of the characters together and ties their storylines together.½

Claire Matthews has returned home from college to spend the summer with her family. It's supposed to be a great time in her life but when she lands at the airport, her usually punctual parents aren't there. Claire takes a cab to her childhood home only to find police swarming all over the place. Though Claire prays desperately that her parents and her little brother are fine, it doesn't look good. When Claire learns that her brother is missing and that her parents are indeed dead from an apparent vampire attack, despite the vow which hundreds of years ago ended vampires hunting humans, Claire is determined to find her parents killer and her missing brother. The investigation will see her team up with a vampire as she negotiates the vampire world for the first time.

I had my doubts about The Vow from the first page. To be clear, dead parents are absolutely a trope in this genre and in this case, both of Claire's parents are found murdered at the beginning of the book, making it far from an auspicious start. It also didn't help that Claire was absolutely alone in the world. How is it that she grew up in that home and didn't have a single friend to turn to? Did they all just disappear when she left for college? I understand that the purpose is to further isolate Claire but it really doesn't feel believable to me. However, Daleo did a good job portraying Claire's pain viewing her parents bodies and her fear that her brother might also be dead.

Where Daleo loses me is Claire's hunt for her parents killers. Claire actually accuses the first vampire she sees with nothing to base her accusation on. She casually decides that said vampire is shifty because he won't submit to interrogation by her and leaves at the first opportunity. Daleo then doubles down by having Claire volunteer at a vampire center (read: feeding area) and then interrogate random vampires coming in for nourishment. She ends up agreeing to meet with not one but two vampires and of course it ends badly. If that is not enough, a vampire priest sends her on a wild goose chase which turns out to be a trap and then Claire follows up on this faulty lead by disturbing a vampire in its lair during day sleep. I quickly found myself wondering how it is that Claire is still alive. Sure, her vampire boyfriend and the police are there to pull her ass out of the fire but at some point she should have learned that simply walking off to meet vampires in isolated locations is not a good idea. Daleo attempts to explain Claire's repeated stupidity by employing Claire's grief over her parents death and fear for her missing brother as justification. In the end, Claire simply comes across as a bimbo, making me wonder how she got into college in the first place?

Despite all of the focus on Claire's vampire hunt and her family legacy of vampire hunting, I don't feel like I really know who she is. It doesn't help that we are continually reminded just how beautiful Claire is and that her blonde hair and blue eyes practically make her vampire catnip. It makes me wonder if this is intentional, so that the reader can place themselves in Claire's position? The problem however is then magnified because Daleo employs this tactic with all of the other characters in the book. Neither Daniels (the investigating cop) or Conner (the vampire boyfriend) feel at all real to me either. I'm going to chalk this up to the very limited character development in this story.

The Vow does not add anything new to the vampire mythology. Vampires have the ability to glamour, fly, and must stay out of the sun and can be hurt and or killed by holy water, crucifixes, and stakes. Having run of the mill vampires in my opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. It's certainly better than having vampires who glitter in the sunlight. The problem is that there isn't anything original about The Vow. Even vampires forswearing consuming human blood isn't new, though the manner in which they feed is.

Read More½

Young adult vampire mystery/mild romance. An easy read, with some twists and turns to the plot to liven things up.

The good: I actually couldn't guess the ending to this one. The mystery stayed a mystery, with a lot of blind alleys along the way.

The not-so-good: Bland characters. Not much to make this book stand out from the pack.

Claire returns from college to find her parents murdered and her brother JJ missing. This is an era when 'The Vow" has been implemented to keep the peace between humans and vampires, so it is surprising that the parents are drained of their blood and have vampire bite marks all over them. Claire decides to solve the murder herself and find her brother so she volunteers at a clinic that feeds blood to vampires to see what she can find out.
She bumbles around and makes a lot of mistakes while not seeming to learn from them. She acquires a vampire boyfriend, Connor, who tries with only some success to help her and keep her from even more mishaps.
While using most of the normal vampire characteristics, none of the vampires had the appeal that you usually find, including Connor. There was never much character development on anyone. The plot could have been better. There were a lot of dead ends that didn't make much sense, but maybe YA readers don't mind that.
While I read a lot of YA paranormal, I'm not really in the target audience. So I found this just okay. I received a couple from NetGalley and am giving an honest review.

Vampires are not my thing. I never even read Twilight. Nope. Or Vampire Academy. So this review comes to you from a vampire inexpert, who, in the spirit of Halloween, decided to step out of her comfort zone and give this a try.

As soon as I read the prologue, I was convinced I'd made the right decision. Still, I am not a fan of blood so certain things made me a tad queasy -like Phillippe's bodily fluids being ALL blood, for example. But putting that aside because well, he's a vampire (duh, what was I expecting), I was surprised to find that many other aspects did interest me. I loved the history behind vampirism and the way the author explains everything to us in detail, including the part that the gods played, etc... It was very creative and not what I was expecting -definitely more interesting than just plain old vampires.

I wasn't aware of the fact that there would be a love triangle and I always steer clear of those because I like happy endings all around. So while I was mentally prepared for vampires and blood, I wasn't expecting this. I don’t want to give anything away but basically, at some point in the book what we thought was true turned out to be something else. I struggled with this discovery for a while, along with the usual anxiety that love triangles give me, especially when you really love both and don't want anyone to get hurt. The story is set to be continued in the next book so we don't find out all the answers yet. Hopefully, there will be a happy ending for all three!

*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*