Die for Me

So I'm trying to get back into book blogging. We'll see how it goes.

In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.

When Kate Mercier's parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life--and memories--behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.

Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate's guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he's a revenant--an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save the lives of others. Vincent and those like him are bound in a centuries-old war against a group of evil revenants who exist only to murder and betray. Kate soon realizes that if she follows her heart, she may never be safe again.

To be honest, I only picked up this book because I was bored. I never expected to even remotely like it. I thought that it would be just like any other paranormal romance out there. In some aspects it was, but in some surpassed my expectations.

I think this was the first book in while that I read in which I liked both the main character and the romantic interest. Kate did turn on the waterworks a bit too much for my taste, but she wanted to take it slow with Vincent. She wasn't declaring her love for him after knowing him for two days, as is common in most YA paranormals these days. She also had to fight for his love, an aspect that's hardly ever shown.

Vincent was fine. I didn't really love him, but neither did I hate him. There were some parts of his character I didn't like, but overall he was fine. He actually seemed human: he had his flaws and such, and made mistakes. I could understand why Kate fell for him. Sure, I was really turned off by their first meeting and Kate's descriptions of him, but as they got to know each other, their relationship progressed beyond that, to a deeper level. He brought out the good qualities in Kate and helped her get over her parent's deaths.

In fact, there were really only two major problems I had with this book: Vincent's stalking Kate, and part of the mythology.

In books, there have been several cases where the romantic interest sees the MC, falls in love with her, and stalks her, all before they've even met. And the main character never really feels creeped out or whatever about it.  I know that if I found out that someone had been watching me like that, I would have been seriously put off.

Also, the fact that revenants are so starkly good and that their enemies are so starkly bad annoyed me. I like books where the good/bad sides aren't so clearly defined like that, where there's more gray instead of just black and white. This also made the villain a cardboard, cliched cutout. One of the reasons that the Mortal Instruments series is so good, for me at least, is that I could sympathize with Valentine. He was as real and fully developed as the rest of the characters. Here, it just wasn't there, and it weakened the book.

But other than the villain, the secondary characters were all as fleshed out and real and Kate and Vincent. I liked the fact that the whole book was more than just Kate and Vincent, it was also Kate and the rest of the revenants, Kate and her grandparents, Kate and her sister. She had healthy relationships with them, and those relationships didn't wither and die when Vincent was around.

This book was actually really good. I liked it more than I thought I would.