I'm a big fan of Julie Kagawa, loved her Iron Fey series, so when I heard she was writing about vampires, with the web going crazy about it, I just knew I had to see what all the hype was about. I'm sad to say I was a bit disappointed with this book though. 
 Don't get me wrong, Kagawa's writing is superb in that she writes a scene so vivid it's like I'm practically there, and she certainly created a fantastic dystopian world of vampires where every detail was creatively done, but I felt like she spent entirely too much time pointing out every little detail that there was very little story to go on. It literally took me over two-thirds of the book before I really got into it, before all the action started happening and I felt like there was a real story there. I felt like Kagawa dragged on Allison's transition as a vampire a bit too much and her inner monologue left me bored most of the time. There were so many times I had to battle with the idea of whether or not to finish the book, if it was ever going to get better. 
 I was expecting action, which there barely was. I thought there'd be interesting characters, but no one caught my attention, not even Allison, who is admittedly a strong-willed girl, but the fact that practically nothing happens throughout the book, you don't even really see her show how awesome she's supposed to be. The last one-third of the book is by far the best of the whole thing and ultimately what makes me want to continue to read the series, although it's definitely not high on my TBR pile after this. It's a shame we have to basically schlep through all that blandness before getting to the good stuff. There really wasn't anything in the first 2/3 of the book that stood out to me at all. I could see Kawaga trying to throw in a couple enticing moments here and there to keep the reader entertained, but I just wasn't feeling it. 
 I'm hoping the next book will prove to be far better, now that all the fluff seems to be, hopefully, taken care of. The premise is excellent and original, I can't wait to see where she goes with this, but if the next book is anything like this one, where I have to literally force myself to finish it, then I don't know if I'll even finish the series.