First Impressions

I picked up Darkness Before Dawn because I do enjoy vampires stories. So a dystopian world where vampires and humans coexist in the barely held agreement and one of the lines of communication between them was on the shoulders of a seventeen year old girl really captured my attention.

Thoughts

What worked for me in Darkness Before Dawn was the plot. What first drew me to the story was the interesting world J. A. London created and reading how Dawn navigated this dangerous, complicated world. With each chapter things began it get more and more complicated.

I liked how the vampires played a public role within the story, not hidden from the human world, which added more dimension to the story. Though I did wished that more vampire characters were introduced in the story.

The pacing of the writing was consistent and smooth, allowing me to get into the story easily. There was a nice balance of action within the story, from the physical action with the humans battling the vampires and the mental power struggle with the head vampire family. The dueling elements of the Victorian past and the Dystopian future some how worked within the story.

The romance wasn’t really blazing like I wanted it to be although there were some sparks. There was the typical love triangle that Dawn struggled through between her, her boyfriend Michael and the mysterious Victor. Which didn’t annoy me as much as I thought it would because their journey was interesting. Did I still know how it would end? Yes. But it was still fun watching it happen.

I would have liked to learn more about Victor and his story. Out of all of the characters he intrigued me the most. Yes I know he was a vampire and that automatically made him interesting but he had a story to tell. A story I wanted to learn more about.

Dawn was an interesting girl dealing with crazy issues and she did what she had to do.
I understood where she was coming from and she had guts facing one of the most dangerous vampire head on, weekly, to protect her race. With her other relationships? Not so much in the beginning but she slowly found her voice. As well as her views and her character. I know there is more to Dawn’s story and I’m interested to find out what it is.

While I would have liked to see a more head to head confrontation between the vamps and humans and their issues, I realized that this is the start to a trilogy so I hope that it’s on the way.

Overall, Darkness before Dawn was a tasty read that grabbed my interest and I enjoyed J. A. London created a platform for a dynamic, edgy story that I’m interested in reading more.