Book Review: Infinite Days - Rebecca Maizel

Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish.
Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm? - from Goodreads.com

Infinite Days is the first book in the Vampire Queen series by Rebecca Maizel, and it's amazing. It's a completely different take on vampires. Instead of a human wanting to become a vampire, Infinite Days is about a vampire who became a human. Now, I will never tire of YA vampire stories, but it was nice to have a different plotline, that wasn't exactly the same as every other vampire book for teens.

What really drove the book for me were the characters, I thought they were well written and although sometimes they could be a little far fetched, I could imagine them as real students on a college campus.
Lenah Beaudonte was a vampire. She was changed, and she was Vampire Queen. She ruled over her coven, and did not hesitate to kill people. She was happy. But all that changed.

Now she's an ordinary 16 year old human, going to Wickham college, knowing nothing about the 21st century. She's confident, even though she doesn't know anything about technology or how society works, 500 years from the year she was born. She's brave, even when she knows it's not going to end well for her, she still tries to protect those she loves. She's funny, not afraid to say what she thinks, and completely loveable. She's definitely my favourite character, and I look forward to read the next part of her story.

Of course, I also loved the boys in the book. Tony, a cute Japanese art student, and Justin, the hot jock. Tony was my favourite of the two at the beginning of the book, because he was nice to Lenah when everyone else thought she was weird. He's that character in the book that you know is never going to get the girl, yet you can't help loving him, and feeling sorry for him.

Justin, on the other hand, is the popular guy who suddenly notices the weird or unpopular new girl. He's hot, confident, and cocky, yet Lenah can't help but fall for him.

The plot line was predictable, and I could tell what was coming. Although it was obvious, I still enjoyed it, and some of the plot twists were written really well. I also enjoyed the flashbacks that Lenah had of herself as a vampire or human before her change, as this gave us some insight into what she was like before, and you could really see how much she had changed. The settings were realistic, and I could imagine it in my head as I read.

Overall, Infinite Days was a really good debut novel, and I can't wait to read Stolen Nights, the second book in the Vampire Queen series. Infinite Days ended on a major cliffhanger, and I am already eagerly awaiting the second book's release.

I give it 4 Feet!