Blood Ties Book One: The Turning by Jennifer Armintrout

This is perhaps the most "vampirey" of all the vampire books I've read. In many of them, the fact that one or more of the characters is a vampire is not absolutely essential to the story. In The Turning, the fact that the main characters are vampires IS the story.

This book follows Dr. Carrie Ames as she becomes a vampire after she's attacked in the morgue and learns what that means. It is NOT a romance, so don't expect a HEA ending. Do expect a lot of interesting and thought-provoking details about vampire life. These vampires are most definitely not "vampire lite."

The relationship between Carrie and Nathan, who serves as Carrie's reluctant teacher, and between Carrie and her sire, the evil vampire Cyrus, is the most fascinating part of the book. The author does a good job of getting us into the heads of the two men. We come to understand them both and the villain Cyrus turns out to be far from a stereotype.

I have one major problem with the book. One of my favorite characters is killed. I know, sometimes characters have to die, but I didn't see the reason for this death. Because of this, I'm giving the book a slightly lower rating than I would have otherwise.

I'll rate this book 7.0 out of 10 and I already have the second book in the series, Possession.