Released: January 01, 2011
Young Adult
Source: Author, in exchange for an honest review
Overall: Flippin' Fabulous!
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Caspia Chastain, art student and barista, is gifted (or plagued, if you ask her) with the ability to draw the future, usually at the worst possible times. Her parents are four years dead; everyday she watches her brother Logan fight his cancer diagnosis. Things get worse for Caspia the day she draws an angry stranger framed by planes of light and violent, bloody images. That exact same stranger walks up to her out of nowhere mere hours later knowing things he shouldn't, like her name, her brother's illness, and her strange ability. That's when Caspia discovers her hometown is a refuge for supernatural beings both Light and Dark, and she and her brother find themselves caught up in a war between the two that predates their very birth. In order to protect herself and her brother, she turns to the one who seems to have started it all: the man who walked out of her sketchbook calling himself Ethan.
But Ethan has his own agenda, Logan's getting sicker fast, and Caspia finds that drawing the future isn't the only strange thing she can do. Meanwhile, someone really wants all of them dead. In a town where Dark doesn't equal Evil and Light isn't always Good, Caspia and Ethan find themselves making strange alliances and even stranger sacrifices in order to protect those they love.
My Thoughts:
Gifts of the Blood... Where to start?
Do you ever read a book and you just don't know how to explain it to someone and it sure isn't for a lack of trying? Do you ever enjoy a book so fabulously much that you stumble over every attempt to explain just how much? Gifts of the Blood is one of those books for me, Vicki Keire truly grabbed me within the first few lines.
Gifts of the Blood was full of dynamic characters with real life struggles, issues, and emotions. At times they seemed like they were all over the place but in the end it all made sense to me. While the Gifts of the Blood is based on those that aren't-so-human it doesn't mean that they didn't experience real life emotions and real life experiences.
I could touch base on the characters one by one but I won't, there are simply too many to do so. You may hear that and wonder how a book can accommodate a wide cast of characters but believe me when I tell you that Vicki Keire has done just that. I learned each character and could pick them out of a verbal line up even just after one meeting. Every character had a unique voice which made the many characters acceptable. It didn't stop at having unique voices, each character had strengths and weaknesses and characteristics and situations unique to them.
Gifts of the Blood is a book that blends the people of the dark and the people of the light and where the lines of good and evil were blurred. Take everything you know about Fallen Angels and kick it out the front door then take everything you know about all the other facets of the paranormal and let that be rewritten. Vicki Keire didn't just bring to us Fallen Angels, humans with gifts, and a typical small town with quirks. Vicki Keire gave us her own unique spin on all of thee above and did it with a fabulousness that I absolutely adored with a fabulous attention to detail which made the story come to life.
Do you think it is slightly premature for me to say that Vicki Keire is one of my newest favorite authors ever? No. I didn't think so. When does the third book come out? Wait, did I mention I purchased book number two right I read this one? No? Well, I totally did.
Unique, action and romance packed, full of twists and turns with paranormal characters/places/things(?) coming out of the woodwork, Gifts of Blood is a fabulous start to a fabulous series by Vicki Keire.
On a side note...I don't think I've ever been so taken with a bad character before. In the Gifts of the Blood there is no character off limits to your heart strings. All characters have their own stories who made them who they are.
On an additional side note, making two more than I normally include... I can't remember the last time I felt so emotionally vested to a small group of characters before. The familial bond between three of the characters Vicki Keire introduced us two was absolutely amazing and heart breaking all at the same time. The situation between the three had me sitting on the edge of my seat and my heart pounding throughout the duration of the story.
