Shelter

I enjoy YA fiction and found this to be a captivating and interesting read. I liked the different take on vampires - not being portrayed as immortal and had families and children. To me this was an interesting baseline for the story.

I enjoyed the characters but found myself getting frustrated with Kai's immaturity - a total difference from the self-confident Max.

This is a captivating read and will appeal to those that enjoy Twilight and other YA paranormal romances. Be warned that this is a cliff-hanger (UGH! Now I NEED to know what happens next!) that contains no sex, but some offensive language.

I received this book from the author through LibraryThing for me to honestly review.

I don't know, I'm really not sold on this book. The plot was not entirely believable at times, I was a little bothered by how quickly they decided they were absolutely in love, and many scenes between Alice and Kai were textbook abusive relationship in flavor. It's a story that has potential in it, but I think it needed more developing to quite get there.

I loved that the vampire was a female instead of the sterotypical male. This has some unique observations on vampires and did provide a good back story. I was dissapointed that it ended. I am looking forward to the next in the series.

"Shelter" provides an interesting interpretation on vampire lore. These vampires are not immortal, they simply age well. They do not perish from holy water or fear garlic, and a bullet to the heart will do just as well as a stake. Most importantly: vampires are a race, not a communicable disease. Our protagonist is Alice, a seventeen year old vampiress who is forced to enroll into human high school for her last year of school. She is reluctant to enroll -- after all, humans are purely food.

Alice immediately falls head over heels for whiny, downtrodden Kai. Alice is a sweet soul and is immediately attracted to the wounded underdog, who she does not realize is entangling her into a potentially emotionally abusive/controlling relationship show more ("Promise you'll never leave me," he says early in their relationship. On day two, he texts, "I love you," and he is prone to calling her obsessively and violent bursts of jealousy. All in all, he makes a horrifying example of young love for the pre-teen set). Almost immediately, she meets another sexy, magnetic, new student Max, who is also inexplicably drawn to Alice and who charms her with his heart of gold. As a reader, I felt zero attachment towards these characters. They never felt realistic, they were always unnatural caricatures.

Shuler has composed a short, fast-paced story that makes for a quick read. This book is suited towards a younger audience, who will find the heated kissing scenes scintillating and who will not judge the characters for their lame dialogue or their frighteningly rapid attachments.

(Disclaimer: I was provided with a free ebook by the author) show less

While this story has a good plot line, I think the story is pretty poorly executed. To begin with, there is a lot of telling instead of showing. The actions of Alice, the main character read something like this: My phone rang. I picked it up. It was Will. I answered it. I said. He said, etc. Also, I was highly disappointed with the vampire part of this book. While Alice and her family are vampire's, the actual story line revolving around this aspect of their lives is really downplayed. In the beginning we are introduced to what vampire's do, how they act, how they feed and how they age. The beginning back story is interesting and had me intrigued but it quickly became a little flat and boring. We're launched into Alice's story abruptly show more with no understanding of what really lead her mother to make the decision as to why Alice was to start attending school alongside humans. We just know Alice was home schooled and suddenly, with her last year, her mother is sending her off to school and that is that. And why must all of the human character's Alice encounter minus the two snobby girl's that seem to hate her for no apparent reason have poor self esteem. And why would these two characters be so inexplicably drawn to Alice and seem to want nothing more than to bend to her will? And why are all of the guys that are romantically interested in Alice possessive to the point where they're aggressive and almost abusive with her? It's not attractive. If you're really interested in a vampire story, this really isn't a strong one until the end. Then the only thing we're really subjected to is the world of vampire Hunters and the Vampire's they want to kill. The second story might probe deeper but I doubt I will read the second to find out. x-posted to my blog. show less

*The review is filled with spoilers*
Most of the reviews of this book are almost praising it, but I just have to say that I cannot see where they are coming from. The plot is inconsistent, the characters unlikeable and unbelievable and the sheer writing style is just too simple.
Let's start with the plot. The story centers around Alice, a young vampire who's mother decides to enroll her in the local high school after years of homeschooling. She's "socially awkward" according to the author, but it doesn't seem like it when she interacts with other teenagers. On her first night she goes to a party she was invited to where she meets the alluring Kai Walker (Which she thinks sounds like "skywalker without the s"). He's quiet but intriguing. show more After a few hours of barely talking and just looking at each other through smoking eyes, they are in love. However, later on in the story she meets Max. The over-the-top friendly bad-boy who wears leather jackets and rides cool cars. From that point on, the story skips a bunch of interesting details, adds a bunch of uninteresting details, and the story is complete with a whole lot of angst and over the top drama supported by strange adjectives and questionable actions. The whole story is over the top and unbelievable. Twilight you could at least still imagine it happening, this however, was just plain ridiculous.
The second problem was the characters. Honestly, Shuler must truly hate her characters because no author with a smidge of respect for her characters would EVER present them the way Shuler did. Alice, Kai, Max, even Alice's mother were all truly unlikeable, unbelievable and just complete drama queens. I wanted at least one of them to die so that I wouldn't have to read about them any more! And when I'm talking about unlikeable characters, I am not saying that the characters are bad people, like Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but characters who one cannot stand reading about because they are not developed properly. There was no depth to the characters, no explanations to their actions, no indication to why they did what they did. In Shelter, the characters did what they did because the author told them to. I wanted to claw my eyes out when reading this because the characters were so boring and unbelievable.

I finished this book because I had to write a review since I got it from the Member Give Away. I did not finish the book because I wanted to, it did not deserve to be fully read. I also cannot care less what happens in book 2. I was in pain from the second page and it just got worse from then on. This was the first book I've read from the Member Give Aways that I've received, and all I have to say is that I really hope none of the other books are anything remotely close to this. Stick to Twilight, it has it's flaws but it will feel like an Oscar Wilde novel after reading this! show less

i won this ebook through librarything membergivaways. I love this book although short i loved the charecters, the plot, and the love triangle. it was filled with love, sorrow, friendship, and was never boring i will be picking up the next book in this series.....