Book Review: Rising Tide: Dark Innocence by Claudette Melanson

I am a big fan of horror movies and cannot get enough of a good vampire story.

Summary

Rising Tide: Dark Innocence is centered on Maura "Mink" DeLuca a teenage girl who is admittedly a bit of an outcast. She finds herself the victim of a cruel prank orchestrated by some of her classmates early in the book. Thankfully, her new friend Ron was close by to save her. 

They fall for each other quickly, much to her dismay as her mother is relocating them to Canada. Caelyn gives little explanation for her decision and the deadline for their move is set. 

Maura spends all of her spare time with Ron, going so far as to skip school to spend more time with him. This almost gets her hurt by a man at a party that she goes to with Ron. He encounters Maura drinking the blood of the boy and Caelyn swoops in to clean up the mess. 

Ron and Caelyn discover Maura exhibiting strange behaviors a few times and they just decide not to talk about it. Maura brings up several concerns about her health: her teeth have changed, she is craving blood, and other bizarre symptoms that scream "vampire!" to the reader. Caelyn, however, continues to brush off Maura's concerns.

Eventually, they complete the move and Maura's new Canadian friend helps her decipher her mother's strange behavior leading to a highly predictable ending for this reader.

Review

Over the course of the book I found myself smiling a couple times because certain parts struck me as funny and other times I wanted to scream at Maura for being an idiot. 

She spends what time she is not with Ron trying to go to her doctor trying to figure out what is causing her strange symptoms. She finally gets an explanation and refuses to acknowledge it. 

Over the entire course of the book I found Caelyn to be an inept mother. Instead of ignoring Maura she could have offered several explanations. She only becomes a halfway decent parent after Maura begins noticing a transformation in herself. Her being "heartbroken" by Maura's father does not cut it as an explanation for me.

Additionally, everyone avoiding talking about Maura's quickly developing "condition" just seemed like a cop-out. There were several instances where it just seemed like it was there to make the story longer.

There were a couple parts of the story that did not feel complete, I would be interested in seeing if these were resolved in the next book.

Find it here: Rising Tide: Dark Innocence

I received the book for free in exchange for my honest review, all opinions are my own.