This book was sent to me last month by the author, Holly Barrington, for reviewing purposes. I finished the book within half a day so it was definitely a quick read at 119 pages! But I was given an unreleased copy so it’s possible that the final version will be longer!
Book Synopsis
“The Substitute” is set in an alternate Britain, where Vampires and Mortals co-exist more or less in harmony. However, that may soon be about to change …
Emily Brown starts her new job at Pathway Software, and at first everything goes well. She makes new friends there and her bosses are impressed so things are really looking up for Emily. Until her friend is killed. Murdered. The official account said it was a gang hit gone bad, and rumours suggest she had drugs in her possession.
However, another, unofficial, report suggests that the bullet wounds were all postmortem, and the drugs were planted on her in the morgue. It also says that she suffered multiple broken bones, cuts, contusions and…vampire bites. Everything suggests that her friend died a brutal and vicious death at the hands of a number of vampires.
Vampire and Mortal relations are, on the whole, very good. Ever since The Compact, there have been eighty-five years of unprecedented peace between the two worlds. But there are some dissenters, the foremost of which are the sinister Circle of Ixiom. And Emily is about to become their bitterest enemy…
Review
How much I enjoyed it: 8/10
How well I think it was written: 6/10
To tell you the truth, I’m extremely torn about this book. I enjoyed it enough to want to finish it and find out what was going on and I also really hope there’ll be a second book but at the same time there were quite a few things that confused me.
The plot itself was actually really interesting. There are so many mysteries and secrets that I found myself constantly questioning what was happening and even who the good guys really were. For a brief few moments I did wonder if our heroine was actually a bad guy and the very idea of it was pretty damn exciting! How often do you get to read the bad guy’s side of the story? Alas, I was wrong but I still find it interesting that I questioned the morals of the protagonist before I questioned the morals of the other characters.
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Emily so I couldn’t really figure her out to begin with. But Holly Barrington did something with this book that I find most authors are unable to do; she created a heroine that I actually loved reading. Emily is completely badass and I love her for it! Especially considering the story begins with her being somewhat timid and hesitant. There are so many sides to her personality that I just can’t stop myself from loving her completely and she accounts for 90% of the reason I’d like to see a second book!
Time skips are an extremely interesting trope within the book. Almost every new paragraph is a time skip, whether by minutes or by days. It effectively moves the story forward at a quick pace but I remember feeling a little bombarded to begin with. It gets easier as the book progresses, but the frequency of the time skips is definitely something I’ve never seen another author use.
The epilogue gives you the impression that the story is being recounted by a third party and the interludes are extracts from documents from the fictional world of the novel. I felt like both of these weren’t utilitzed as well as they could have been and didn’t fit in well with the actual story. Maybe the use of the narrator as a character, or even one of the characters themselves reading the documents would have been more appropriate? I don’t know, I just feel like there was potential in the epilogue to create a whole other mystery about the person writing the actual story.
One thing I loved was the creation of “The Substitute” within the book and the fact that it (and the sunlight pill) were free! I felt like the sunlight pill (I have now forgotten the name of) was also a really interesting addition to the book! I preferred it to the more commonly used jinxed/bewitched jewellery idea.
Final thoughts
I really enjoyed the book! I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a non-traditional vampire story because it constantly gets you thinking! Though I do think the beginning can be a bit difficult to get your teeth into, definitely keep at it because it’s completely worth it in the end!