Crusade by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie

Note this is a rereview of a book I read back in April:)

Crusade by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie

First in the Crusade series

2.5 stars

It all started when vampires came out of the shadows and told people they fed off of animals and wanted peace (sound familiar? Insert image)and then a war broke out when it became obvious it was all lies. Most people still worship them or are too afraid to stand up to them, but not Jenn Leitner. That’s why she left home and is now working and living with the Salamancian Hunters; the Hunters a group from Spain known for defeating vampires that try to overrun cities. When she is betrayed by someone unexpected *scoffs* (yeah right), she learns that her fight against the vampires has just truly begun. I wanted to love this book. It sounded amazing and looked promising, but I have mixed feelings about it. There were times when I would read a part and think “Wow that’s awesome.” Then there were times when I was just so bored and I thought about setting the book on fire for entertainment.
 
It was a roller coaster for me. There were ups and downs, but I think there were more downs than ups. This book is told from multiple POV. I mean there is at least five POVS total in here. The POVS could either be interesting, boring, dull, or meh. I’ll go into depth later on in this review. The pacing was slow and I felt this book was way too long. This book is 470 pages and it felt like I was reading a thousand page book. The story dragged a lot. I just didn’t want to read the book in class or at my house. I didn’t want to read this book at all. I had no motivation and then I thought “You know what let’s hurry up and get this over with.” I finished it the next day and was still feeling only a little satisfied.


The main female character is Jenn. Jenn leaves no impression on me whatsoever. She was a borefest. If you look up that word in the Urban Dictionary (Is it even in there? I made it up) you would see a picture of her. As the story progressed she seemed to become very boring. She was actually interesting in her diary pages, but after that I wanted to bang my head against the wall. I was left saying and feeling ugh every time I would go back to her POV. She had started out strong but apparently she’s only interesting when she writes about herself. The ending, well, let me just say this… It didn’t fit well with whom she is at all and she will fail… epically. I have no faith in Jenn and I think she’ll crash and burn like a bad ABC sitcom.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 3

The main male character is Antonio. He’s a Spanish Hunter and guess what he’s a vampire because it’s obvious you can have a team of vampire hunters without one vampire. >_> Antonio isn’t really all that great of a lead male and there were time when I was just like “Yeah, OK, let’s move on to something else.” He has potential to be a character but it just didn’t work out well in this book.


Swoon Worthy Scale: 7

The Villain- Every betrayal and villain in this novel was more interesting than the main character, but even Jenn’s description of them seemed to bring down my interest levels in them.
Villain Scale: 7.5

The other members of the team are: Eriko, the leader who is more bent on the destruction of vampires than leading the team, Jamie, a hothead that hates vampires and werewolves, Holgar, a fellow werewolf and a constant victim of Jamie’s hate, and Skye, a witch with a dark past. Heather, Jenn’s sister, also plays a huge role in this novel and she more interesting than Jenn. Out of all the characters in this novel Skye was my favorite. Her secret was the most intriguing and I want to know more about her.


Character Scale: 7.5
I had really wanted to love this book, but it felt short. I think 2.5 stars is generous because I could’ve completely listed all the reasons I hated the book, but the concept was interesting and it saved the novel. Hopefully the next one is better, if it’s not I don’t think I’ll be continuing this series or maybe I will because I want to know what happens.

Cover Thoughts: I like this cover much more than the cover with just gray gates. This cover is a lot more interesting and fits the novel better. I don’t love the cover, but I don’t hate it.