Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel

Summary: Lenah Beaudonte is, in many ways, your average teen: the new girl at Wickham Boarding School, she struggles to fit in enough to survive and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy lacrosse captain. But Lenah also just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire queen. After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah is able to realize the dream all vampires have -- to be human again. After performing a dangerous ritual to restore her humanity, Lenah entered a century-long hibernation, leaving behind the wicked coven she ruled over and the eternal love who has helped grant her deep-seated wish. 

Until, that is, Lenah draws her first natural breath in centuries at Wickham and rediscovers a human life that bears little resemblance to the one she had known. As if suddenly becoming a teenager weren’t stressful enough, each passing hour brings Lenah closer to the moment when her abandoned coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as she can. But, to do so, she must answer ominous questions: Can an ex-vampire survive in an alien time and place? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?

Review: With so much vampire fiction around these days, it would be easy to dismiss Infinite Days as just another cliched, unoriginal novel. However, this is far from the truth and I was surprised at how much I loved this story.

The author did a great job of introducing Lenah to our world and her thoughts about adjusting to everything around her were believable. A lot of things that we take for granted today were completely new to Lenah, and it was intriguing reading the thoughts of somebody who was learning all about our world. 

The book had time jumps from the present day to back to her time in the coven. Time jumps are always a risk, because it’s very easy to turn readers off by having them interfere with the flow of the main story. Here, however, the jumps gelled seamlessly with the main story, and never felt jerky or out of place. I liked getting an insight into vampire Lenah as it helped me understand the self-loathing she felt for herself. The vampires in this novel are not vampires with a conscience, and some of the scenes from Lenah’s past showed just how cruel and manipulative her and her coven were. For all her cruelty though, I never actually hated Lenah and I think that is testament to the author’s writing ability to be able make me feel compassion for someone as horrible as Lenah was.

Human Lenah was much nicer than vampire Lenah. Although she still had a lot of vampire instincts - she regularly thought about killing people who got on her nerves and she had a fascination with seeing people’s veins - she was able to control herself and make friends. She meets a boy named Tony, who takes her under his wing and is there to answer any questions she has about the world. It was a bit unrealistic that Tony never really questioned why she was so naive about everything, but he was still a nice friend for Lenah to have.

Then there was the love interest - Justin Enos. He is a big part of the reason this book did not score higher from me. He was too flat for my liking - we never really find out very much about him apart from that he’s popular and good at lacrosse. Some of the dialogue exchanged between him and Lenah was painful and there was no reason for the passion between them. If he had been developed better and there was more of a build up to their relationship, I think I would have liked Lenah and him together. As it is, I never really understood the attraction.

Overall, Infinite Days stands out in the sea of YA vampire literature for being a bit different from the norm. Although it’s not perfect, I am highly anticipating the next installment in the series as I’m interested to read the conclusion to the unexpected ending. A promising start to what I hope turns into an enjoyable series.

Rating: 4 out of 5