Publisher: by Bianca Scardon
Source: ebook (bought)
Rate:




Summary:

My name is Jemma Blackburn, and I have a secret. I know vampires are real. I watched one murder my father eight months ago, and even though they tried to convince me it didn’t happen—that I’d lost touch with reality due to the trauma, I know what I saw was real.
Hollow Hills is now the place I call home. It was supposed to be my chance at a normal life. My chance to bury my secret and start over. But everyone around me is keeping their own secrets, whispering lies into my ears like promises, and one of them is about to turn my entire world upside down.
I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had the answers. I thought I knew who I was. The truth is, I didn’t even know the half of it. There's a reason these vampires are still after me. There's a reason they will always hunt me. Because I'm not human.
I'm the devil they fear and the angel they crave.
Only problem is, I don't know it yet.

Review:
Everyone has told Jemma Blackburn that she is crazy. She saw her father be killed by a vampire but no one believed her. They put her in a mental institution and brainwashed her not to believe what she saw, or so they thought. Jemma knows very well what she saw.
Now she must move in with her uncle in his giant home in Hollow Hill, the town her father tried to keep her away from. She has entered a new world and realises that there are some things happening but that no one wants to tell her what's going on. Besides a new home, she now has to go to a new school and one of the girls is constantly treating her very badly because she thinks that Jemma will steal her boyfriend - that she doesn't even know.
Strange things are unfolding in Hollow Hill and, without knowing it, Jemma is in the core of all of it.
I first started reading this book with reluctance, afraid that it would turn out to be another "Twilight" kind of book - not that I do not like Twilight but that genre has passed its prime - but it actually surprised me. In this story, I found a lot of details that make it very relatable to girls - mostly teenage, but still... - it made me relive things that actually happened to me in high school, and I bet that other people who read this book felt the same way.
The thing that stands out the most is the intertwining of reality and myth and religious aspects. Hearing of the concept you would think that it had a big chance of not working but it actually does, what is amazing. Not only does this book satisfy the "relatability" aspect but also the "otherworldly" and "sort-of-divine" one. They work together.
Like everything in life, not everything is perfect but I believe that the following instalments will clarify the not so well explained aspects of the story but, as the writer gains experience the writing will get better. Besides this, all the characters have a deep complexity that may not be very noticeable but you get to know them layer by layer, and not all at once.
This is a good book for everyone who doesn't mind a little guilty-pleasure reading, something that is not too deep but still has some depth and complexity to it. Even if you do not, give it a chance, it may surprise you.