Published Synopsis:
Two guys, one girl, and two dark secrets that threaten to tear her world apart.Alice Wright is a young vampire going to high school for the first time at the age of seventeen at the behest of her eccentric mother. In many ways, she's more afraid of the human students than they would be of her.
She feels lost and awkward in human society, but she soon develops a strong bond with the cousin of one of her human classmates, nineteen year old Kai. He is beautiful, but somewhat of an enigma. She discovers a dark secret in Kai's life, and she instantly wants to shelter him from the pain that has tormented him all his life.
Then she meets Maksim Augustine, the incredibly gorgeous guy who seems more like he should be a model than a high school student. She is overwhelmingly attracted to him physically, but her love for Kai causes her to continually push him away. Eventually, she discovers a frightening secret about Max, too.
But Max's secret threatens to destroy everything...
Review:
Everyone has secrets, especially vampires who are just trying to live out their lives in a human world as inconspicuously as possible. Alice Wright has been sheltered from the human world for her first seventeen years, but now her mother for some reason wants her to have the same experiences as a human teenager. That means going to high school. Alice is a shy, somewhat awkward girl who discovers that the stereotypes on television became stereotypes for a reason. There are the mean girls in school, there is the one girl who everyone loves to pick on, and there are guys who are absolutely irresistible. Now Alice has to figure out how to react to all of this.When I decided to start doing reviews for indie authors, I wondered how long it would take to find a book that merited five stars. I wonder no more.Shelter, book one of the Blood Haze series, was an unexpected delight. As one explores the YA paranormal romance genre, it often seems that vampires involved in love triangles has been done to death and most often they are just variations of Twilight, but Tara Shuler is a fresh voice in the genre. Yes, there are vampires. Yup, there’s a love triangle. And yes, the word love is bandied about and in some instances makes you wish you could sit Alice down and explain the differences between love, like, sympathy, and attraction.
But isn’t that what teenage love is all about? Isn’t it a time when you can try love on and spin in front of the mirror to see how it fits? Alice’s feelings for Kai are affected by his past and sometimes their interactions are absolutely cringe worthy when looking in from the outside, but it’s easy to see how her desperation not to hurt him any more than he already has been makes her look past some of his behavior. Maksim is a different story. He is confident, fun, and stands up for what he believes in and Alice can’t help but be drawn to him. But he’s not exactly who she thinks he is and if he learns her secret, he could take down her entire family. But would he?
Shelter is a wonderful debut novel from Tara Shuler. The story flows effortlessly and allows the reader to share the ups and downs and the frustrations of the characters. I read the book in one sitting because I didn’t want to put it down and with the cliffhanger ending, now I have to read book two! I don’t mind in the least.
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