Review of Turned

My review of Turned by Morgan Rice is based on an e-book copy of the book that was loaned to me through a Kindle lending site. The following review is my honest interpretation of the work.

Goodreads Summary: "In TURNED (Book #1 of the Vampire Journals series), 18 year old Caitlin Paine finds herself uprooted from her nice suburb and forced to attend a dangerous New York City high school when her Mom moves again. The one ray of light in her new surroundings is Jonah, a new classmate who takes an instant liking to her.

But before their romance can blossom, Caitlin suddenly finds herself changing. She is overcome by a superhuman strength, a sensitivity to light, a desire to feed--by feelings she does not understand. She seeks answers to what’s happening to her, and her cravings lead her to the wrong place at the wrong time. Her eyes are opened to a hidden world, right beneath her feet, thriving underground in New York City. She finds herself caught between two dangerous covens, right in the middle of a vampire war.

It is at this moment that Caitlin meets Caleb, a mysterious and powerful vampire who rescues her from the dark forces. He needs her to help lead him to the legendary lost artifact. And she needs him for answers, and for protection. Together, they will need to answer one crucial question: who was her real father?

But Caitlin finds herself caught between two men as something else arises between them: a forbidden love. A love between the races that will risk both of their lives, and will force them to decide whether to risk it all for each other…"

I'm going to warn you guys right now that there may be minor spoilers in this review.

For those of you following my previous reviews you know I'm a big fan of romance in books, particularily the kind that takes awhile to develop. I didn't get that in this book. In fact there were two cases of instant romance to deal with. In some cases this could be explained, like maybe the main character knew the other person in a previous life. You know, some kind of reincarnation or something. But it's basically they look at one another and it's "love". Instant romance all over the place. I didn't believe any of it.

Something else you guys may have picked up on is that characters are important to me. I want a good cast in everything I read, I'm a sucker for good characters even when a plot might be a little out of whack. I think what a big part of my problem was with this book is I was never able to connect with the main character, there were times when I didn't really like her at all [and not in the passionate way that can turn a book around for me]. What I mean to say is that I never felt any kind of bond with her, nor did I really care what happened to her.

This book wasn't all bad though, please don't go away from this review thinking that. What made me want to read this book in the first place was the summary, I loved the idea of battling covens and that actually was executed really well. In that area of the book I was interested. I wanted to know what had led them to this war, what the different factions stood for, everything really.

I know you're all waiting for me to give this book my usually rating out of five stars. But I'm not going to on this one. Suffice to say it wasn't my cup of tea. I'm not saying that you shouldn't read this book, but I am admitting it wasn't for me. I know there are tons of fans of this series out there and you might find yourself to be one of them, so if the summary catches your attention at all give it a try.