Review: My Love Lies Bleeding by Alyxandra Harvey

Title: My Love Lies Bleeding

Author: Alyxandra Harvey

Publisher: Bloomsbury (4 Jan 2010)
No. of Pages: 248

Grade Rating: B-

The Drakes are rather different to your usual neighbours. They are vampires and some of the members of the family date back to the twelfth century. One of the children, Solange, is the only born female vampire known and, as such, she poses a direct threat to the vampire queen. Her best friend Lucy is human, and when Solange is kidnapped Lucy and Solange's brother, Nicholas, set out to save her. Lucy soon discovers that she would like to be more than just friends with Nicholas. But how does one go about dating a vampire? Meanwhile, Solange finds an unlikely ally in Kieran, a vampire slayer on the hunt for his father's killer.

My Love Lies Bleeding was a packed novel full of sharp twists and turns, action, mystery, romance and a taste of the paranormal. Although it had its qualities, I find myself leaning towards the negative side a little for many different reasons.

As I read the blurb and began reading past the first few chapters, I wasn't sure exactly what the plot was. Even as I reached the last couple of chapters, I still wasn't sure what the plot was even though I had just completed it. I found myself constantly wondering as to what direction this book was going in. In my opinion, I don't really think that there was a plot. It was more like a few battles, dilemmas and various scenes scattered around. There was a bare, brief plot but and I think this could have been portrayed through the writing at a much better level. If there had been just a tad more development of the plot, I think I may have rated this book higher but sadly, this bothered me quite a bit when I was reading. Also, some may say that this a fast-paced novel and some may say slow. I think that this a mixture between the two. I agree that things did move quite quickly but I think that these incidents just took far too long to happen. Things that were better suited to the beginning of the novel, happened about half way through.

One thing I did like about this book was the characters. I thought Lucy and Solange were exceptional characters to narrate the story. I liked that they were best friends but so completely different. Lucy was confident but kooky whereas Solange was more laid-back and natural. I thought that it was very clever to make the vampire character have the personality and image of a human and the human to have the personality and image of a vampire. I found some of the supporting characters such as Solange's brothers and parents very hard to remember, except for Nicholas and Logan who were mentioned a lot in the text. I was often wondering who they were again near the end of the book as there were simply far too many characters that didn't play such an important part in the book. During some parts of the dialogue I was wondering whereabouts this was actually supposed to be set. Solange used words like 'Mom' which is obviously American but some of the language was blatantly British. This not only annoyed but dramatically confused me.

The writing was also very simple. There wasn't anything amazing about the way it was written but it wasn't terrible either. I can't quite put my finger on it but I do feel as if the text was missing the element that some books have that can transport the reader to another time and place. This book was an interesting read but it didn't amaze you with the setting or description or vocabulary. If the writing would have improved just a smidgen then I also think I would have rated this book higher.

I realise my review has been mostly negative but I believe that you should give MLLB a chance. It isn't quite Twilight obsession worthy but it is an easy, entertaining read that portrays brilliant action and two great leading ladies!