Book Review: Infinite Days (Vampire Queen #1) by Rebecca Maizel

Summary: 

Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish.

Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?

Review: 

**This is a spoiler free review**

I have heard great things about this book, but I never expected to like it as much as I did.  Stories like Infinite Days are proof that the vampire trend is here to stay.  When done correctly, a good vampire novel is enthralling and captivating.  I was swept away from the first page of this book, and I didn't get up from my couch until I finished it!  

Lenah has been a vampire for 592 years.  Above all else, she wants to be human again.  She wants to breathe, walk in the sun, experience the senses of taste and touch, and most of all, be free from the never ending mental anguish that vampires experience in Maizel's world.  Lenah gets her wish at the cost of her best friend's sacrifice.  

What follows is her attempt to assimilate into human society at a boarding school.  She has to keep her past a secret and learn how to be a regular teenager.  Lenah knows that her vampire coven will come for her, and she is constantly looking over her shoulder, aware of the danger...until she gets so caught up in the experience of human life that she forgets about her past.  Lenah meets two very different guys and has to choose between them, all the while haunted by her best friends' sacrifice to make her human.  I found myself rooting for both of Lenah's guys---it was a very tension-filled love triangle. 

I'm going to stop here, so as not to give anything away.  The book's ending left me dying for more (pun completely intended, I'm a dork like that).  Infinite Days is the first in a trilogy, and I cannot wait for book two: Stolen Nights, out in 2011.  

If you're tired of the typical vampire books, I would give Infinite Days a try.  It's a refreshingly original and different take on vampires.  I'll never think of vampires the same way again!  

Just One Gripe: 

I wish I would have bought this book for my nook, because the print on my soft-cover copy was pretty small.  By the end of the book, my eyes hurt.  Of course, that could also be due to the fact that I sat and read for four uninterrupted hours!

The Best Thing About This Book: 

The new spin on vampires: their feelings, desires, lives, the magic surrounding their existence, everything was so well-thought out and well-done.

Appropriate for a younger audience: 

Maybe: it's no more graphic than Vampire Academy. 

Score:

Characters: 5/5

Plot: 5/5

Setting/Imagery: 5/5

Originality: 5/5

Ending: 5/5

Total Score:  25/25