Book Review: Kiss Me Before I die by Rena Marks

 

Book Description

A love affair between a vampire and an Extinguisher is doomed from the beginning, but Afton can't resist the lure of the predator.

Extinguishers are humans deliberately infected with the vampire virus. Children from all social levels are regularly screened for exceptional athletic abilities—speed and strength. Bravery.

Females are especially rare for Extinguishers, since the female body is not prone to muscle mass. Not like a man’s.

Humans thought it appalling that children were fed the blood of a captured vampire in order to improve their performance. But they looked the other way for the greater good of destroying the growing race of evil creatures—Vampires. After all, someone has to police the stronger, more beautiful race of peoples. It was beginning to look like plain old vanilla humans were low man on the food chain and that inspired fear. Like all prejudices, after the fear followed hatred.

That had been me. I was the Queen of the Extinguishers one year previous. Now, at the tender age of twenty-five, I'm the first retired Extinguisher in existence.

I should have known it wouldn't be that easy for the government to let me go.

My Review

The government started taking children away from their parents in order to train them as Extinguishers to fight the vampires. Humans looked the other way as children were taken away, experimented on, trained and fed vampire blood in order to make them strong, strong enough to kill the vampires. 

But not all vampires are bad, most just want to live in peace and have families of their own but humans are scared and thus the Extinguishes rise to kill the vampires. 

Afton was the first Extinguisher, the strongest and she used to be the queen of them. But the Extinguishers are told they can retire once they reach the age of 25...if they live that long which most don't. Afton is the very first to reach her 25th birthday, something the scientists didn't think possible. But Afton is more than she seems, she has secrets, secrets the scientists who experimented on her could not figure out. She was the fastest, strongest and best Extinguisher and the scientists couldn't figure out why or how to duplicate the experiment that made her that way. But Afton, even as a child had an inclination of why she was different, not that she would ever let them know her secret though.

When the scientists couldn't figure out what made her different and couldn't make more like her, they decided to breed her but she put a stop to that right away as well. So once she was old enough to retire, she took all of her files with her, much to the chagrin of the scientists who had experimented on her. 

When she meets Ethan who is a vampire, she doesn't kill him and he won't leave her alone because he loves her but she has strong feelings for him as well even though she fights them. Ethan is great and I loved him. He kept after her, he comes on strong because he knows with all the brainwashing she's had that she'll never willingly be with him even though she has feelings for him, so he pursues her. 

When Extinguishers come after her, Ethan helps her and she finds herself among vampires who don't trust her but she gets to see that all vampires aren't as bad as she's been taught they are. Ethan helps her and she in turn finally sees him for the great guy he is. The secrets that surface were great, it was a slight twist as to why the scientists were never able to make another like her. I really liked the reveal. This was a different take on a vampire book and I liked it. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon