Ashes Review

Ashes By Stefanie Ellis
(Book 1 In The Gray Area Series)

Sidney Fox is a 17 year old, senior in high school. Her best friends Veronica called Moon. Christmas break is over and she has to go back to school and today a new boy named Cael Ash starts in her class and every girl in school is head over heals for him, even her 15 year old sister Kylie, who thinks that he is going to marry her. One week later friday afternoon Sidney decide to go camping and because Cael is at her house talking to Kylie about just beign friends, he comes with her "because it is not safe, going alone" she is really annoyed with him, but let him go. On the trip they become friends and at night when sidney wakes up there is a man there that wants Sidney, but Cael kills him with a wood dagger and he turn to dust, she then finds out that he is a vampire. And the next morning they agree that there is something between them than need to be explored. Sidney tells Kylie that day, that she will stay away from him if she wish, and so she does. That monday Kylie is beginning to change for the better, as she start hanging out with Sidney´s friends, different opinions and dressing better, and by the end of the week, she tells Sidney to be with Cael. On a date Cael show her the old tivioli which he bought and they talk about the fact that they know so much about each other, without actually knowing. The next day Cael comes home to her house for dinner, but when Cael and her are standing outside. They get a message to show up at a adress in Romania or Sidney will die. They go to Romania right away, and go to the adress that Cael got a hundred years ago, when he woke up in a coffin. Here they meet Taran, who tells them he knew Cael in human life and he tells them about his human family as well as his royal vampire family. He tells that Cael was suppose to have the throne that his "brother" the now evil Liam has. Shortly after Sidney gets kidnapped by Liam, and is taken to were he lives, were he every hour drinks from Sidney. He has a wife Rayna, who knows Taran, and she get her maid Nicole to change Sidney to a vampire because there is no other way to stop Liam and free Sidney. After Taran and Cael comes and helps, they lock Liam in a cell and after a day as a vampire Sidney forget her human life, but have some glimse, and Cael shows her how to be vampire. at her second day as a vampire Rayna finds them, teling that Liam broke out, they then hide in a church with Taran, Nicole and Vince preparing to take Liam down. When they about to take so of his forming guards down Vince and Sidney gets seperated from the rest and Sidney is almost killed trying to save Vince, so Cael gives her some of his blood. And when she wakes up in the church 3 days after, she remembers her life as human, she is a mind reader, she can fly and because of Cael blood she is now "royal" and can go out in sunlight. They attack Liam and his guards while he has a party, but when Liam accidentally almost kills his wife Rayna, aming for Vince, he becomes good again. Cael and Sidney goes home and she talks to Kylie and tells her everything, now she just have to find out how to tell her parents, So she stays at Cael´s place. The next day Sidney and Cael goes to her home, and her parents are happy to see her, but her mom can see a change and Sidney can hear in her mom thoughts that a change wasn´t suppose to happen, she ask what is happening and her mom brings 2 letters to her and Kylie, from their birth mother teling they are half fairies.

I thought this was a relly good and nice book and i really enjoyed reading it. Now as for the characters, i absolutly love Sidney, and i see so many things of my self in her. I liked the names she gives her family, because that is exactly what i do with my family. I doesn´t seem completly real that she isn´t scared of him just a little, but okay it comes in the morning, but we all react different.
The only thing that just seem weird and unbelievable in this book is how fast the characters change their mind and suddenly they are evil and then good at 2 seconds, and it just doesn´t seem real. Also i think that maybe their is too many things going on, i thought that the author could have used a little more time on each subject, it seem like the story is going too fast. In this there is also other things a vampire can do, like when you drink another vampires blood you get their power and stuff like that.
And wow really a big cliffhanger at the end there. So i am really loóking forward to reading the next book.

Grade: 7-10