Review - Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel

Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: August 3, 2010
Review based on ARC from Traveling ARC Tours
Rating: 4 Bookcases

Summary found on Goodreads


I was a bit worried about reading Infinite Days. After reading so many vampire books, I questioned whether this one would make an impression? The publisher’s summary piqued my interest. The premise was unique – a vampire that wants to be human and actually gets the chance to be. Overall, I really liked Rebecca’s take on vampires and how she structured Lenah’s story.

Lenah Beaudonte had been one of the oldest and most powerful vampires in the world but she wasn’t happy. Lenah wanted to be human and everything that goes along with it; being able to taste more than blood, to actually feel a loved one’s touch, to grow and change. With the help of Rhode, (her soul mate, lover, and best friend) Lenah is able to become human again. Now, she is a sixteen year old girl having to adjust to life in the 21st Century. Not only is life completely different than she remembers, Lenah must also try to fit in at boarding school in Massachusetts. Of course, school comes with the requisite mean girls, odd best friends and cute boys.

Not only do you get to see how Lenah adjusts to life at school, you also get to flashback to Lenah’s life as a vampire. And while reading about Lenah’s friendship with Tony, the animosity between her and the popular girls and her feelings for Justin was okay, it was the flashbacks where Infinite Days really shined. Meeting Lenah’s coven and getting to know Rhode were my favorite parts of the book. These scenes were crisp and vivid and so easy to visualize, it really felt like I was at Lenah’s manor house in England, outside a pub in Scotland or in an apple orchard at night. The juxtaposition of the past with the present showed just how much Lenah had changed not only physically, but emotionally as well.

I really wanted more of the coven and more of Rhode in particular. Rhode was in the book for such short periods of time, but he made the biggest impression on me. After reading about Lenah and her coven, it was a bit hard for me to accept who she ended up dating. Justin is the stereotypical “big man” on campus; rich, popular, a lacrosse star, the guy all the girls want to date, etc. And while, he did seem like a great guy, he just wasn’t in any way Lenah’s equal in the same way as Rhode. I think that part of the reason for this was because there was so much history between Lenah and Rhode, close to five hundred years of it, that it felt very rushed for Lenah to have such a strong attachment and feelings for Justin so fast. But at the same time, she was experiencing adolescent hormones and human attraction for the first time in almost 600 years, so it was easy to why she would fall for Justin. And I have to admit that by the end, Justin had grown on me.

The first part of Infinite Days covered Lenah’s acclimation to human life. Ms. Maizel did a wonderful job of showing just how much Lenah had changed and how she dealt with being human again. In the second part however, she threw the reader a curve ball that changed the tone of the story. Where the beginning felt like a calm walk through campus with punctuations of action, the second part felt like a sprint to the ending. And what an ending! Part of me wanted the story to end very differently, but once I got to the end I realized that there really wasn’t any other way for it to end. Now, I can’t wait to read the sequel to see what comes next.

Infinite Days had a different take on vampires that kept my attention from start to finish. If you like reading about vampires, but are looking for a story that is distinctive and different then you should definitely pick up Infinite Days.