Review: The Black Lily by Juliette Cross

The Black Lily
(Vampire Blood #1)
Juliette Cross
Release: February 27, 2017
Goodreads Amazon

Cinderella like you’ve never seen before…

With the threat of the vampire monarchy becoming stronger every day, the Black Lily must take drastic measures. As the leader of the underground resistance, Arabelle concocts the perfect idea to gain the attention of the Glass Tower. Her plan? Attend the vampire prince’s blood ball and kill him. Fortunately for Prince Marius, her assassination goes awry, and Arabelle flees, leaving behind only her dagger.

Marius is desperate to find the woman whose kiss turned into attempted murder, hunting for the mysterious assassin he can’t push out of his mind. But what he uncovers could change the course of his life forever…

Review:
This book was one of those "I didn't love it but I didn't hate it." books for me. The storyline was unique but was more than a little predictable. The way the Cinderella story was tied in was kind of cool but the main characters felt a bit... lackluster to me. This may get a bit ranty but I had a hard time connecting to both Marius and Arabelle.

Arabelle takes the action of a few vampires and applies that stereotype to all vampires and doesn't begin to question if it could be wrong until she's confronted with Marius. There are two things that irritated me the most about Arabelle. One, she treats Marius terribly through the majority of the story. And two, she keeps running her rebellion on her first impression of vampires and makes some stupid decisions because of it. She did grow a bit as a character by the end of the book but it was frustrating reading her decision making thought process in some places.

Now let's talk about Marius. Marius seems about perfect. He's kind, good looking, and clearly cares about his people and the reason that he doesn't realize they're afraid and upset is because he's been seriously sheltered from the world. But that's not why I couldn't connect with him. He lets Arabelle treat him like dirt because he wants her. I can only think of one time in the whole story where he stood up for himself after she hurt him. I know that since it's a Cinderella story that it's going to be a bit instalovey but the way they fell in love and their whole coming together felt a bit too convenient despite the trials they went through.

Despite my inability to connect to the main characters, I still enjoyed the story. The secondary characters Nikolai, Sienna, and Mina and the vampire mythology are what kept me turning the pages. I'm interested to learn more about them, the hartwolves, and the hartstone. The next book is about Sienna and Nikolai and I'm totally here for that pairing. I'll definitely be getting my hands on book two at some point.

  

  3 / 5 Stars