Infinite Days - Rebecca Maizel

Infinite Days is the debut novel by Rebecca Maizel and it was released on 3rd September 2010 by Macmillan Children's Books and it is 400 pages long.

Plot
Lenah Beaudonte is a 500 year old vampire. She has no morals, no humanity left in her at all and doesn’t care who she kills to be able to feed. Along with Lenah is a powerful coven of vampires who she handpicked to join her. At least that’s who she was, until her lover Rhode performed an extremely dangerous ritual to turn her back into a human.

Now very much alive in the present day, Lenah is human once again and back to being a teenage girl. The life ahead of her is so very far away from any kind of life that she knew before and she’s going to have a lot to learn. Rhode enrolled Lenah in a prestigious boarding school and even though she isn’t a vampire anymore, she still gets a large amount of attention. While being buried, preparing to become human again, Lenah left behind her powerful coven and she knows the day that they will come looking for her is fast approaching. Will she be able to fit into this very strange life and hide away from the vampires she once called friends before they come to destroy her?

What I thought
The whole idea behind the story was a very interesting one and something I had never heard about before, which is what drew me to this book. In no other book have I heard about vampires being able to become human again so I was really excited to learn how this was done. It was good to see that not every vampire could do this and that it was extremely dangerous to try to perform the ritual. When Lenah becomes human again, she is a teenage girl who has been out of society for a very long time. There are some funny moments when it comes to Lenah figuring out new technology and what else is new in the world. I imagine it would have been very confusing for her, waking up and not having any idea about what is happening in the world. Not only that, but Lenah had never been to a modern day high school before so this was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Another thing that I liked about the vampires in this story was the fact that there was no good and bad side. All vampires are bad in this case and Lenah’s past is proof of that. The reasons behind the evilness were well explained and I thought they were very believable. These vampires lose everything about their human selves once they are turned so there is no humanity or soul to keep them away from being truly bad.

I really liked the fact that I got to learn about Lenah’s time with her coven and how she met Rhode and Vicken. These parts of the story were really interesting and gave me the chance to find out who Lenah really is, or was in this case. I love to know at least a little bit of history behind a character so this really worked for me. Lenah’s coven were made out to be extremely dangerous but when the time came to meet them, it was all over far too quickly and I didn’t believe they were that powerful after all. I would have liked to have seen a bit more action and conflict between Lenah and her coven to make this more believable.

I just didn’t love the relationship between Lenah and Justin. To me, it didn’t feel real at all and I couldn’t really believe what was going on between them. I think my main problem was that they didn’t really have any time at all to get to know each other. As soon as Lenah arrives at school, Justin is extremely quick to drop his current girlfriend who he seem to have been with for a while. This aspect of the book was one seen all too often. I really never believe that a couple can fall madly in love without even knowing the simplest of things about each other. I would have liked to have seen a lot more interaction between the two, rather than to read about the time Lenah spent with Tony. Although their friendship was nice, it didn’t seem all that important to the story at times.

One of my favourite characters was Rhode, even though he isn’t really around that much. The idea of him and his morals, even as a vampire, were really interesting and I would have loved to have seen what he would do in Lenah’s situation. I never thought I would say this about a vampire but Rhode is a true sweetheart and made me melt a little bit.

I hate to say it, because I was really looking forward to this one, but I didn’t love Infinite Days at all. There were quite a lot of good points for me but also quite a few bad points. The story moved along at quite a slow pace for a long time and I never felt like anything great or exciting was going to happen. Unfortunately, this book fell short of my expectations.