Freeblood by Marny Copal

Freeblood, is a rather interesting take on vampires and their servants. In Copal's universe vampires can create Fastbloods, which happens when a mortal drinks from a vampire three time and they become under that vampires control. A Freeblood however is someone who drinks vampire blood, but not the necessary three times from the same vampire. This allows Freebloods the added benefits of speed and healing, but without that pesky compulsion to listen to a vampires orders.

The story centers around Quinn, a seemingly ordinary girl, who watches her friend Jo-Jo get kidnapped. Quinn's cousin Kasey was there at the time and ends up refusing to be left behind while Quinn tries to find her friend. Quinn turns out to be anything but ordinary, and turns out to have had many experiences with the supernatural that she never told Kasey about.

There were a couple of things in this book that for lack of a better word, annoyed me at times. The primary annoyance throughout the book was often how the characters perceived situations and their subsequent actions. Kasey, who has never been exposed to the supernatural, is highly judgemental about things she doesn't understand forces herself into situations she really has no business being in. I realize she is a younger character, and it was probably the intention of the author to have her be a little on the annoying side, and it worked.

Quinn also became a subject of annoyance for me, I often times felt she acted first and thought about her actions only after they resulted in detriment. She has kind of this warped sense of "I'm the only one who can fix things, and I don't need anything from anyone, I can make it on my own", which is fine well and good, except she wasn't alone, and her actions directly affected and harmed other people. That being said, by the time I got to the end of the book, I understood Quinn more and her actions, and those of you who read the book will understand what I mean.

Another characters in the book is Del. He works for the Order, which is basically an organization that tries to police the supernatural community from getting to out of control. Del is not a bad guy, and as the book progresses I did end up liking him, I genuinely think he has the best intentions and does his best to protect his friends as well as serve the Order. I think the Order, and Del often suffer from what I can "black and white" syndrome. Where they only see things one way or the other, either you abide by what they believe or you are wrong and/or evil. They really are lacking in the areas of gray, and in my opinion the world exists in shades of gray, there is seldom a situation that is only black and white. But besides that I think Del was a good character and does pretty right by Quinn.

The book itself is well written, even the characters who annoyed me in various parts of the book are all written quite well. The book is easy to follow along with, filled with action, and generally a good book and read. I think it's possible this book would be acceptable for upper YA audiences, as the episodes of violence aren't horribly gruesome, and there is no real romance and certainly no sex in the book. I think readers of urban fantasy would also enjoy this book, but as mentioned before if you are looking for romance this isn't the book for you. Overall I would say solid book.