Cynically Sweet (Booklikes)

In the beginning, Lily is kind of whiny; complaining that she's traded all sorts of favours for this minimum wage job. Not to mention, she seems to think highly of herself, commenting that she thinks of her voice like a beacon, bringing out survivors and giving them a bit of brightness in the night. She's kind of a dull character; she's angry a lot and she bigs herself up as someone important, but I think that she's ultimately really boring. I don't see much of a personality, despite her having a semi-successful radio show, and the author tries to write it as if she's really edgy and has some sort of attitude. However the outcome is that she's mediocre, at best. Wolf is kind of dull as well. His part of the story is to be a hero, of course, but it essentially leaves Lily looking weak. Also, it really just makes her look stupid when she finally realises that he's her mystery caller; I know that people often sound different on the phone, but she would still be able to recognise it, being that she described the voice the exact same way both times when mentioning his voice. He's somewhat creepy as well; he's been a radio caller of Lily's for quite some time, and turns up when she needs the help. So, essentially, he's been stalking her. Later on, he claims he owns her. The other characters are pretty bad as well. They're mostly stereotypical bad people and the author is clearly trying to create and "us vs. them" type of setting where Lily and Wolf are a team, taking on the world and everyone but them are horrible people. Yet, there's nothing that makes me like any of the characters. Lily is a whiny girl who seems to think everyone else owes her something; she complains about her job (and the favours she needs to do to keep it), her apartment, her entire life. Yet, those are all things she can change, but she continues to be miserable about everything. By the end of the book, the author has written a tacky little note about how Lily feels like she's a changed woman, but she hasn't. At the end, she continues to whine and there's no real character development on her part to suggest that she has changed. Wolf is just a creepy guy. It's his fault that she was in danger in the first place, but she acts as if he's done her some huge favour in saving her life. He makes the same comment over and over again, that she's not prey (and that she's a predator). However, she is prey and I don't see why the author keeps on trying to say that she isn't.

The plot is somewhat generic. It's a standard vampires vs. humans where the main female finds herself in trouble, gets saved and taken in by a vampire. Lily, the main female, is the standard damsel in distress. Meanwhile Wolf, a stereotypical vampire hero, takes her in because he's a creepy stalker and he's got feelings for her. There are a lot of things that make little sense in this book. Firstly, we have little explanation as to why the two thugs went after Lily in the first place, save for a lame reasoning where they were apparently doing it to get back at Wolf. The events within the vampire community were just lazy writing and only served to make Lily look weaker, in my opinion. Wolf makes huge claims that she's a predator (not prey), but he has to go and fight the battle for her, giving us no indication as to why she's meant to be some sort of predator when she's done nothing to suggest that. Apart from that, the whole scene in the vampire community is pretty stereotypical; there are so many scenes like that in so many vampire movies, tv shows and books, right down to the part where everyone stops to look at them when they enter as if they're something special. Going on about the vampire thing, it was ultimately a pretty lame version of vampirism. There were little personalisations or good usages of the vampire theme. If the vampire portion were taken out, it wouldn't be much different.

Overall, it was a lame book. I can see where the author was intending for the story to go, but there were no good characters and nothing of the plot was unique. It's a pretty disappointing book. 1 star.