This is a teen novel about a young modern day girl named Ellen suffering from a rare, undiagnosed blood disease. She discovers several diaries and delves into them with enthusiasm. The writer is an ancestor and very much like Ellen herself only living in historical times. They even share the name Ellen. Confused yet?
The book then goes back and forth between the past Ellen and the present Ellen's life which are similar in many ways. The past Ellen, at the request of her father, is pretty much forced to spend time with an ailing visiting Count. As time goes on it's pretty clear that the Count is a vampire. The more the present Ellen reads the more deeply enmeshed in the past Ellen's life she becomes. So much so that oftentimes it is unclear exactly which Ellen we are reading about. Either way both of them are in danger from the evil, old fashioned style vampires. While I found it refreshing that the vampires were sinister and weren't the glammed up sexy versions we so often find these days the story just didn't work for me.
This book had a good start and was very interesting but lost me about 2/3's of the way in because I was hopelessly confused about events. Which Ellen was which? Why was present Ellen experiencing things that the past Ellen did? Was I just confused? I have no idea. I continued to the end in somewhat of a reading fog and didn't comprehend many of the plot twists. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
The book then goes back and forth between the past Ellen and the present Ellen's life which are similar in many ways. The past Ellen, at the request of her father, is pretty much forced to spend time with an ailing visiting Count. As time goes on it's pretty clear that the Count is a vampire. The more the present Ellen reads the more deeply enmeshed in the past Ellen's life she becomes. So much so that oftentimes it is unclear exactly which Ellen we are reading about. Either way both of them are in danger from the evil, old fashioned style vampires. While I found it refreshing that the vampires were sinister and weren't the glammed up sexy versions we so often find these days the story just didn't work for me.
This book had a good start and was very interesting but lost me about 2/3's of the way in because I was hopelessly confused about events. Which Ellen was which? Why was present Ellen experiencing things that the past Ellen did? Was I just confused? I have no idea. I continued to the end in somewhat of a reading fog and didn't comprehend many of the plot twists. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
