Title: The Vampire Stalker
Author: Allison Van Diepen
Series: -
Genres: YA, Fantasy, Fiction, Thriller
Publisher: Scholastic
Source: Paperback
Pages: 250
// Add to GoodReads // Amazon //
Series: -
Genres: YA, Fantasy, Fiction, Thriller
Publisher: Scholastic
Source: Paperback
Pages: 250
// Add to GoodReads // Amazon //
BLURB: Amy is in love with someone who doesn't exist: Alexander Banks, the dashing hero in a popular series of vampire novels. Then one night, Amy meets a boy who bears an eerie resemblance to Alexander. In fact, he IS Alexander, who has escaped from the pages of the book and is in hot pursuit of a wicked vampire named Vigo. Together, Amy and Alexander set out to track Vigo and learn how and why Alexander crossed over. But when she and Alexander begin to fall for each other, Amy wonders if she even wants him to ever return to the realm of fiction.
I love vampires! I am obsessed with them! If you don't believe me ask HannahCassie. I am absolutely one hundred percent fascinated by the entire concept of - a vampire, so this was just another books that I knew I had to read simply because it has vampires in it. I saw this book in an online book store and when I saw the cover line 'Even been in love with a boy in a book'? and immediately I was like, YES!YES I HAVE! So I knew I had to have this book and read it straight away. I read some reviews of it on Goodreads and there were multiple opinions, so I actually going into it I was kind of excited! And by the way I think the girl in the cover totally looks like young Demil Lovato :D
THE WORLD: Okay so we have two worlds, reality and fiction and it all blends together. Let me explain, so we have Chicago today, a normal city, normal high school, friends, lives etc. In this Chicago there is series of books called Otherworld (I always read Underworld :D ), that are huge, like Harry Potter huge, and it's set in Chicago city as well, but this Chicago it very different. In the books, time in Chicago has stopped since 1920, so there are no cellphones, computers in other words it's way behind and the reason is because it's ran by vampires. So the twist here is that one night the horrible vampire driven world of Otherworld comes to life when two main characters from the book appear in today's Chicago. Sounds interesting right? Don't get too excited, we don't get to see the cool vampire world like at all.
CHARACTERS: The main character is called Amy (because of the book cover I just call her Demi Lovato). She is almost seventeen and is living with her sister Christina and her mom, because her dad left them for another woman. Let me just start by saying that I personally don't like the name Amy for the main character, especially when there are names like Luisa and Katie (Amy's two best friends). Anyway, Amy and her friends are really into the Otherworld books, they are obsessed with it, especially Amy, all her life circles around these books. To be honest with you, in my opinion Amy was a weak lead character. She didn't do much character development, or any development actually, and some of the things she did made me just laugh out loud. The only thing that I liked about Amy was that she writes fan-fiction.
Amy is in love with a fictional character from Otherworld, the dashing but mysterious vampire stalker and hunter - Alexander Banks (again the name really bothered me, I don't even know why but it just made me feel like I'm being forced to pronounce that long name). He is one of the character's that come into reality. In the book Otherworld Alexander is described as this lonely wolf whose mission in life is to destroy his one true enemy the vampire king of Chicago! I have mixed feelings about this character, because I couldn't relate to him or even find him charming. To be completely honest with you, I didn't understand his character at all!
Then we have the main villain, the vampire king of Chicago - Vigo (the second character that comes to reality). Again I did not understand a thing about this guys. I mean in the entire book he was painted as this horrible, human killing, blood drinking monster that turned Chicago into a city frozen in time where all people need to stay inside their home after eight and never let anyone they don't know inside their house, but to be honest, he never did anything that horrible. Like when Alexander chases him into our world he literally does not do anything but sit in a mall or near teenagers and drink. I mean he kills like two people and that's it, there is absolutely no prove that he is this super bad horrible person - the author tries to make him evil towards the end and stuff but trust me, there is nothing evil about this guy.
Amy is in love with a fictional character from Otherworld, the dashing but mysterious vampire stalker and hunter - Alexander Banks (again the name really bothered me, I don't even know why but it just made me feel like I'm being forced to pronounce that long name). He is one of the character's that come into reality. In the book Otherworld Alexander is described as this lonely wolf whose mission in life is to destroy his one true enemy the vampire king of Chicago! I have mixed feelings about this character, because I couldn't relate to him or even find him charming. To be completely honest with you, I didn't understand his character at all!
Then we have the main villain, the vampire king of Chicago - Vigo (the second character that comes to reality). Again I did not understand a thing about this guys. I mean in the entire book he was painted as this horrible, human killing, blood drinking monster that turned Chicago into a city frozen in time where all people need to stay inside their home after eight and never let anyone they don't know inside their house, but to be honest, he never did anything that horrible. Like when Alexander chases him into our world he literally does not do anything but sit in a mall or near teenagers and drink. I mean he kills like two people and that's it, there is absolutely no prove that he is this super bad horrible person - the author tries to make him evil towards the end and stuff but trust me, there is nothing evil about this guy.
Then we have minor character like Amy's mother (with whom I had such a big problem, but I'll talk about that later), her absentee father, her idiot sister, who I won't even spend time writing about. There are three characters in this book that I liked: James and Hannah, and Ms P. So James and Hannah are fictional characters from the book that also travel to reality. Their story was interesting to me because James is a vampire hunter and Hannah is the sister of Vigo, they are in love and from what was suggested about them in the paragraphs from Otherworld they are torn between following their paths and love, because Hannah loves her brother who James and Alexander want to kill. When they appeared it was quite a refreshment to the book. Ms P is a human woman, who works in the school library, and solves the mystery of how fictional characters come to this world.
Elizabeth Howard is the name of the author who wrote Otherworld. She also plays a minor role in the book.
LOVE: Right love. Well the only love I enjoyed in this book was the scraps I got about James and Hannah, because the love between Amy and Alexander made no sense. It was something like this - Amy is in love with a fictional character Alexander, when he comes to her world, she still loves him, she helps him and then suddenly he is like bewitched by her, he protects her, he is so in love with her :D Again let me just say that this happened like in 20 pages or so, there was absolutely no development of their feelings for each other, okay yeah she loved him, but how he fell in love with is a mystery because there was no indication of emotions what so ever :D And I mean I'm talking about full on YA love, the 'I'm going to die for you' love. I understand that these two characters had to be in love because that's the story but there was nothing leading to their falling in love.
PLUS: The plot itself. I actually had never read or seen a plot when fictional characters come to real world, especially not with vampires. To be honest I liked the entire Otherworld book theme and the world created in them. If this was a real book I would so totally buy and read it because it sounded awesome!
PLUS: The plot itself. I actually had never read or seen a plot when fictional characters come to real world, especially not with vampires. To be honest I liked the entire Otherworld book theme and the world created in them. If this was a real book I would so totally buy and read it because it sounded awesome!
MINUS: Perhaps let's numerate this part because I'm worried I'll forget something, so: 1) The explanation how fictional characters crossed into our world. Okay that I understood, because of some physics law a time or other dimension portal opened. Sure. 2) The author seeing Otherworld Chicago in her 'visions', to be honest I didn't really understood how the writer got to write everything down even their littlest secret, I think they made her like see visions or something, I dunno, at this point I didn't really pay attention anymore 3) The language. Okay so it's stated in the book that when Vigo came to Chicago it was 1920 and chaos broke down nothing has evolved in the city, but the language the characters were speaking didn't resemble 1920 to me, more like early 1900. And what also really bothered me was the inconsistency, because for example Alexander would start speaking all 1900 English and then switch to like modern words, I dunno it thew me off. 4) Alexander's quick adaptation - so basically he turns up in a world where there are new inventions, new devices, new everything and he's using a laptop like the next day, calling cellphones, leaving voicemail, has his own voice mail and drives cars. I mean come on. 5) Everything happened really smoothly - for example, Amy meets this guy who claims to be Alexander Banks from Otherworld right? He saves from some creep and then she brings him home and her mom let's some weird guy dressed in leather live with them! She's not like 'get out you bum, go get a job' no, she's like 'I trust you Amy Done, I was done!'. 6) The entire ending.
OVERALL: I'm giving this book two stars because few reasons, I really liked the concept, I think it's unique and interesting. I really loved James and Hannah, I wish there was actually more about them and just more of Otherworld in general. It was an easy read, and I mean you can still pick this book up, and try it out maybe you will like more than I did. Maybe my problem was that I was expecting something amazing since I'm so picky with vampire stuff. Anyways, let me know if you have read it or if you'll read.
p.s. if you have some great vampire books please share them with me :)
OVERALL: I'm giving this book two stars because few reasons, I really liked the concept, I think it's unique and interesting. I really loved James and Hannah, I wish there was actually more about them and just more of Otherworld in general. It was an easy read, and I mean you can still pick this book up, and try it out maybe you will like more than I did. Maybe my problem was that I was expecting something amazing since I'm so picky with vampire stuff. Anyways, let me know if you have read it or if you'll read.
p.s. if you have some great vampire books please share them with me :)
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