Sparkler Book Review: Infinite Days

Nicole-Lyn's last book review was hilarious, and this one is just as good!—Sparkitors

Infinite Days, by Rebecca Maizel, is a novel  that involves, um...people with a certain condition that makes them have to drink the blood of other living creatures for sustenance, and said people with said condition getting deeply involved with others...Okay, okay, it’s a vampire romance novel. But before you boo me off the imaginary stage, let me explain. This book is actually pretty good. You know I’m telling the truth because almost no one’s heard of it, and (considering what’s popular nowadays) literary obscurity is practically a compliment.

The back of this book is dreadfully, shamefully misleading is the worst way humanly possible. It makes you think that it’ll be like another book with a similar premise whose name I’m certain I don’t even have to say for you to know what I’m talking about. Because of this, I put off reading Infinite Days for a very, very long time. The phrase "more beautiful than I could dream" is right there on the cover. Can you really fault me for not wanting to read it? But read it I did, and I am happy to say that the whole "don’t judge a book by its cover" saying is correct in this case.

The book is the first person account of a 600-year-old British vampire queen named Lenah Beaudonte who gets turned back into a human by her undead boyfriend Rhode. That’s exactly what she wanted to happen, but being human again comes with a price tag that would give people sticker-shock: her undead boyfriend is officially dead-dead, she has to live in some stupid boarding school, her other undead boyfriend wants to eat her or something, and she’s been buried in a grave for a century and has no idea how the current world works at all. Some people just have it harder than others, I assume. How sad.

Despite being an old lady, she still looks sixteen, so Rhode killed some guy and made sure that she’d be able to live at the avant garde New England boarding school Wickham. Also, he leaves her a crap ton of money. Her life is so hard. There she meets her new best friend forever Tony, her new shallow love interest Justin, and a clique called Three-Piece that was taken straight out of a weeknight Lifetime movie.

I should tell you what’s good in the book now.

I really like Lenah; she’s a female protagonist with a brain and a rather intriguing personality that I can respect. Her vampiric nature doesn’t fully go away when she’s turned back into a human, and I personally love how that was handled. She thinks about killing people and drinking their blood and stalks the boy she’s interested in, constantly thinking about dating and/or eating him. The fact that her interest is written as strictly predatory and animalistic, not romantic, was very much appreciated on my part. I also find her weirdness and social awkwardness rather endearing. Plus, she’s a frickin’ vampire queen! She has a castle and everything! You can’t get more awesome than that, folks.

The flashback segments of the book are some of my favorite parts, showing how different her relatively nice human self is from her soulless harpy vampire self. She was paranoid, homicidal, and depressed 24-7—all the while managing to be totally awesome in her own sociopathic way. The vampires are pretty good, too; not much is added to them besides a bit of new lore, but at least they’re nothing offensive.

I also really like Tony; he’s an art nerd going to a school he’d usually have to pay an arm and a leg for on an art scholarship. As an artist myself, I’ve got to give props where props are deserved. The relationship between him and Lenah is my favorite in the book actually, and my only complaint is that I wished there were more scenes with the two of them and not with Lenah and Justin.

And I find that to be an acceptable segway into the bad parts of this book.

It could be that I never liked romance in the first place, but I find the romance between Lenah and Justin thoroughly obnoxious. The relationship itself is fine, I guess. It didn’t make me angry or anything, but it’s just wholly unnecessary. It doesn’t need to be there. There’s a perfectly good vampire story, and I get the impression that the publisher took one look at it and said, “Nope! Not publishing this until you throw in some shallow romance, Maizel. It’s what the kids want.”

The only things about the vampires that bothered me was that they were depressed. I’d be perfectly okay with that if Lenah didn’t constantly bring up the fact that vampires are depressed over and over again. I get it. Vampires are dreadfully, terribly, heart wrenchingly sad all the time. Tell us once —twice if you feel the need to—but mentioning that in every chapter is making me want to drink drain fluid. Just stop it.

So most of my complaints just boil down to the category of  "There are stupid, cheesy clichés that don’t need to be there. Take them out at once."

Overall, Infinite Days isn’t really anything special. It’s a well-written vampire novel with some romance thrown in that, despite some of its cheesiness, is an enjoyable read. It doesn’t revolutionize young adult literature, but it doesn’t disgrace it either. Most of the characters are fun and interesting, and Maizel managed to take a rather overused premise and make it her own.

If you’re looking for something entertaining, this is a good book to pick. It’s miles ahead of a lot of other teen books being published, and I think that if you were to take out the unnecessary parts, it would cross the line from being good to actually being great. But since that sounds pretty time-consuming, I’m just going to appreciate a good book for what it is.

We're actually sort of intrigued...would you read Infinite Days?

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