{Review} Stolen Nights by Rebecca Maizel

Title: Stolen Nights
Author: Rebecca Maizel
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Series: Vampire Queen, #2
Release Date: January 29th, 2013
Pages: 303 (Paperback)
Source: NetGalley
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Lenah Beaudonte should be dead. But having sacrificed herself to save another, she finds herself awakening with strange powers that are neither vampire nor human—and a new enemy on her trail. In her vampire life, Lenah had thought that being human was all she ever wanted; but the human heart suffers pain, heartbreak and loss. With her new powers growing and the dark force of the Nex after her soul, Lenah faces a choice: between the mortal love of gorgeous Justin, whose passion fed her human soul, and taking a different path to become the mistress of her own destiny, wherever that may lead...

Thoughts: Actual rating is 1.5 stars.

First thing I want to address is, when I was first starting this book, I noticed that it was extremely different from the excerpt available at the end of Infinite Days. It got me thinking that that was maybe the reason why this book's release was pushed back to 2013. They had to make drastic changes. In my opinion, I thought the prologue & first chapter from the excerpt was a lot better than the first chapter in this one.

Anyways, now that I've got that out of the way, I also want to get this spoiler out of the way. (which, don't worry, isn't that big of a spoiler cause it happens like, one or two chapters in) Rhode comes back. Now I had to get that out of the way because if not, this would be a very hard review to write.

I shall start off with this: This book was a hot, ratched mess.

After reading Infinite Days, which I gave a three star rating, my hopes for the rest of the series were pretty low, I will admit that. Cause the romance is just mediocre. And you all know if a series has a bad romance (Rah rah ra-a-ah. xD Sorry, I had to) then it gets pretty impossible to make me love said series, so it would have to try really hard.

This series, however, didn't try hard enough, and it went zooming down the hill, then proceeding to completely crash and burn.

Lenah is one of the most selfish, shallow heroines I've ever seen in any series. In the first book I didn't like her, but in this one I full on hate her. As soon as she sees Rhode is alive, she immediately drops Justin like a pile of rocks and goes to full force Rhode Mode, obsessing about him non-stop, even imagining him when she and Justin were having a little romantic moment.

But of course, twist! They are not allowed to touch, and Rhode is being cold and distant! Wow, never saw that coming! So original!

I was really pissed off by how Lenah just brushed off her so called "love" for Justin just like that. It just proves how meaningless the romance in this series really is. Probably the most shallow romance I've ever read, really. Even worse than Luce and Daniel's romance, and that's saying something.

I spent the rest of the book feeling sorry for Justin (although I stopped feeling sorry for him near the end—you'll know why), and especially Tracy, who loses everything. The author especially hates her. I was expecting her to just kill Tracy off and be done with it, but I was surprised when she didn't.

Anyways, the plot is basically this evil vampire lady from Lenah's past, who happened to be one of the maids in her then home, Heathersage, and who Lenah had apparently turned into a vampire and is now wreaking havoc and killing everyone and things of that nature. And then these Aeris...women?...came all of a sudden and...gah, I barely even remember the plot. It was just too stupid to follow for me.

Most of the book is just Lenah trying to stop this evil chick named Odette from getting this ritual of some sort and destroying all of Wickham and the people in it. Filled with Lenah whining over how she can't touch Rhode and how it's killing her and all that. Justin is pretty much just there as a replacement by now.

I did like Vicken, though. I'm glad he didn't count as a love interest anymore. Him and Lenah are just friends now. I did like it when he was around though, cause he was witty and pretty charming. He's part of the reason I added half more to the rating.

The other part of why I gave this book a higher rating than it deserves is the twist at the end. I wasn't expecting it to happen, and it might have even been interesting enough to keep me reading this series.

Might.

I still don't know. This book was such a huge disappointment that I can't see myself continuing this series, cause I feel like it'll probably just get worse and worse. But oh well, we shall see eventually.

An ARC of this book was provided to me by NetGalley & St. Martin's Griffin.