What was your favorite read this month? What was your Top Spot?
Top Spot is a new monthly blog meme hosted by the Skype Sisters. Every month we will get together to share our favorite read from that month and we would love for you join us! This meme will take place over the last weekend of every month, giving us all a chance to gush over the great reads we've encountered and bring an awesome ending to the current month. The Top Spot book can be anything you've read, whether it's old or new, an ARC or a finished copy. All October reads counts!
I know I’m not a book blogger/reviewer, but I am an avid reader, and go through about ten books a month, give or take, so I thought this would be a fun meme to participate in. It's hard to pick just one favorite, but the book I most recently finished has to take my Top Spot. I’ll probably get through one more this month, but it would have to be pretty outstanding to make me reconsider my winner.
Die For Me by Amy Plum
In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.
When Kate Mercier's parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life--and memories--behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.
Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate's guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he's a revenant--an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save the lives of others. Vincent and those like him are bound in a centuries-old war against a group of evil revenants who exist only to murder and betray. Kate soon realizes that if she follows her heart, she may never be safe again.
I have to be honest: this book had me at Paris. It’s my absolute favorite city, so as soon as I saw that it was the setting for a new paranormal romance series, I was sold. It didn’t disappoint, either. The setting was well-written and evocative, and had me yearning to return at every new description. And while I love vampires, it was refreshing to read a paranormal series with a different “monster,” one I don’t think I’ve seen done anywhere quite like this. Revenants are essentially zombies, but they’re not the brain-eating Walking Dead kind most would imagine. These are men and women (well, it’s YA, so boys and girls) who died sacrificing their lives for someone else, and have been rewarded with immortality and the compulsion to continue to save innocent lives.
Our hero, Vincent, is one of these revenants. He’s gorgeous and charming and pretty much the perfect hero. Some might say a little too perfect, but I don’t really mind that in romance fiction. The heroine, Kate, is a human girl who just lost her parents and is dealing with the grief while living with her older sister and grandparents in Paris. I’ve seen some criticism of Kate, saying she’s too much like Bella from Twilight, but while she could be moody, I didn’t fault her for it: she just lost her parents! I was never once annoyed by her, and that’s something I can’t say about Bella. I liked her, found her spunky and funny, and truly enjoyed the romance that blossomed between her and Vincent. Some of the plot was a little predictable (mainly the bad guy, who was obvious from the beginning, and whose endgame I figured out before the characters did), but all in all I enjoyed the book immensely and am eagerly awaiting the next in the series.
As a side note: I’m insanely jealous of the author after reading her bio. Lived in Paris? Now lives in the Loire Valley? Handsome French Husband? Where do I sign up?!
