Review: Stargazer by Claudia Gray

Title: Stargazer

Author: Claudia Gray

Published: HarperCollins (29th April 2010)

No. of Pages: 328

Grade Rating: B

Evernight Academy: an exclusive boarding school for the most beautiful, dangerous students of all—vampires. Bianca, born to two vampires, has always been told her destiny is to become one of them.

But Bianca fell in love with Lucas—a vampire hunter sworn to destroy her kind. They were torn apart when his true identity was revealed, forcing him to flee the school.

Although they may be separated, Bianca and Lucas will not give each other up. She will risk anything for the chance to see him again, even if it means coming face-to-face with the vampire hunters of Black Cross—or deceiving the powerful vampires of Evernight. Bianca's secrets will force her to live a life of lies.
Yet Bianca isn't the only one keeping secrets. When Evernight is attacked by an evil force that seems to target her, she discovers the truth she thought she knew is only the beginning....

Stargazer is the second book in the Evernight Academy series and follows Bianca after she was seperated from Lucas, a vampire hunter. This book is a well worth a read if you enjoyed Evernight, but I didn't find it as good as its prequel.
 
Stargazer doesn't leave off exactly where Evernight finished but is written a few months after the previous events. I remember being really excited for the next in the series when I finished Evernight, but Stargazer picks up and unfortunately didn't restore that excitement. I found it quite hard to get into once it had started and it was about halfway through the book before anything of note happened. I was expecting to be thrown into the action from the first page but I thought that it dragged on for a bit at the beginning. However, once the action started, it was hard to put this book down. It definitely took one or two unexpected turns that caught me off guard and it became increasingly difficult to predict what was going to happen next.
 
I also thought that the characters improved in Stargazer. Before, I was definitely on Team Balthazaar as I found Lucas extremely rude and demanding. Now, I'm officially undecided as to who I think Bianca should end up with. One thing I disliked about Bianca this time was how she constantly made her love for Lucas very clear but at the same time had feelings for Balthazaar and wanted to act on them. I continued to like Bianca and was glad that Balthazaar centred around the plot more this time.
 
I found Stargazer to be more of an in-between book. It definitely left desires to read Hourglass after the action-packed ending. If only it could have been that eventful throughout the entire book. I'm intruiged to see what will happen in the next book and I will certainly continue with the series. A good read for vampire fans.