*I received an ecopy of this book via NetGalley. This has not influenced my review.*

Umm… Just umm. That actually summarizes my thoughts pretty accurately.

First and foremost, Alonso, the main character and the only POV character, had no personality. If you asked me describe him in one word, it would be average.

Alonso was also the least curious person ever. He woke up, discovered he was a vampire and that his last memory was from five years ago when he was still human… and then he did nothing. He didn’t ask the people helping him questions about vampirism, he didn’t try to figure out what had happened to him in the past five years, he didn’t even ask Tyler (the person helping him get back on his feet) what supernatural he was or if he was human. If that happened to me, I’d immediately be asking a million questions and wanting to know everything and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing for the last five years. And everyone they did find who might’ve had answers, they just let them walk away without even trying. Then, when Mama sent him to stay with Bobby so that he could learn about being a Charge, he hardly even asked anything about that. Not only that, other than getting a job at the safe house, he didn’t really do much of anything. He didn’t even feed regularly and kept letting himself get too hungry. Everyone around him was putting their lives at risk to help him, and it was like he just didn’t care and didn’t want to do anything. I don’t know if he had a legitimate mental illness, like anxiety or depression, or if he was just poorly written with no real actions of his own most of the time because that was what the plot needed, but I didn’t feel bad for him when things happened because all his mistakes and screw-ups (like taking too much blood from Pasquale and being alarmed to realize that Pasquale was planning on getting off), and even some of the bigger plot twist things, could’ve been avoided or figured out sooner if he’d just bothered to ask questions.

I’m also still confused about certain things. What exactly does it mean to be “whammied”? What is “slipping”—an actual kind of invisibility, or a metaphorical thing? What does it mean to be a Charge? (Like, what changes? What’s required?) *SPOILER* What exactly was Tyler? Because it was stated that he was Paidrig, but then it was stated that he was a construct, and Alonso said something about how Tyler wasn’t even a person and was just parroting Paidrig’s beliefs. And if Paidrig wanted Marcella all along, why couldn’t he have just taken her at any time? Why did he need to use Alonso and create some decades-long elaborate plan? *END SPOILER* Oh, and I still don’t even know what Alonso was being used for, what had actually been happening to him for the past five years.

Lastly, the book ended rather suddenly and easily. And considering what I mentioned in the spoiler, I didn’t really understand what the point of the whole rest of the book was.

I will say that the one thing this book did really well though was the diversity. Alonso was asexual, and Marcella was Hispanic, trans[woman], and I think bisexual.

I also thought the concept of how the vampires don’t really feed on blood, they feed on lifeforce but the blood is how they get it, was cool.

Overall though, diversity alone isn’t enough to make like a book, and I spent most of this book confused about things or frustrated with Alonso.