Let me begin by saying that I have not caught onto the hype of vampire books. While there have been some that I have enjoyed, I have not liked the vast majority of them. Sadly, I have to put this book in with the ones I have not enjoyed.

I found this book to be extremely slow paced. Melissa came across as a whiny pre-teen rather than the young adult she was supposed to be. Overall I cannot recommend this book to others. ( )

“Shades of Twilight,” which I received from the author as part of the member giveaway program, is an unsophisticated narrative that perhaps tries to trade off on the extreme popularity of the novels and movies. It’s told from the point of view of Melissa, a recent high school graduate around whom events threatening and strange begin to swirl. A young and handsome young man saves her life on a couple of occasions, but turns out to be a vampire. Author Martin C. Sharlow does a decent job of starting the story in common, everyday circumstances, but the protagonist seems very dim and unaware of what’s happening around her, and discovers rather surprisingly late the nature of the new man she has found.
In fact, I had a difficult time with the sudden mood swings and unfounded rages and the unpredictable tears of the first-person narrator. Some of it was supposedly warranted by tricks and vampire hypnosis, but they were a little too frequent and always unexplained. The author at least sustained his narrative and was true to his point of view, but the manuscript could clearly use a professional editing. In the basic requirement that a piece of fiction create in our imaginations a “continuous dream,” this one falls short. ( )