Throwback Thursday Book Review: The Arrival of Armando DeLeon by Rhiannon Frater

Some of you may know that I originally had my own blog, Beauty but a Funny Girl, prior to joining Bookish (now Bookish Lifestyle). I was thinking the other day about all those reviews I left behind when I transferred and thought they should get some love too - no matter how badly written and newbie they come off! So I present to you: Throwback Thursday Reviews! Every once in a while I'll post an old review from Beauty but a Funny Girl, unedited in terms of content, with the exception of any spelling or grammatical mistakes. It's definitely going to be fun and interesting to see how my tastes and writing style have changed over the years!

Series:	In Darkness We Must Abide #3
Genre:	Young Adult, Paranormal, Vampires
Publication.Date:	April 12, 2013
Pages:	54 (eBook)
Published By:	Unknown
Website:	Rhiannon Frater
	The Arrival of Armando DeLeon on Goodreads
My review copy:	Received from the author in exchange for an honest review

Where to get:

A mysterious new vampire appears in the life of the Socolis. Is he friend or foe?

Darkness We Must Abide is the epic saga of one young woman caught in the dangerous world of the creatures of the night..

(Goodreads)

Originally posted June 30, 2013 on Beauty but a Funny Girl

This episode started out so ominous! 

As with every episode, it starts out with grown up Vanora. Her inner monologue drops hints that something really bad happened with her family once she turned 18, which by the end of this episode is about two years away. As she’s driving home, things seem to get worse. She sees shadowy figures out in a field and when she pulls over, thinking it’s Armando, he calls her and tells her to “drive. Don’t stop again. Just drive.” Yikes.

We are now four years into the future of the flashbacks - does that make sense? Roman, Alisha, and Vanora have pretty much figured out how to make this vampire thing work, with the help of Ryan and Miss Robbins. Roman getting the short end of the stick because he is dead to the world, while Alisha at least as the opportunity to be seen in pubic.

This is also the episode in which we meet Armando - obviously - another vampire who claims to have been alone for hundreds of years and is grateful to find more vampires as most vampires live in desolate houses and pretty much keep to themselves. He spends a good deal about of time with the Socoli family and eventually earns their trust and the affections of Vanora (she’s 14-15 at this point). I’m still not sure how I feel about him at this point.

Episode three felt more like a filler to me. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but not a lot actually happened. I get it though, you can’t constantly have something going on. Downtime is a necessity. Frater moves us forward in the timeline throughout the episode and everything is seemingly perfect. Alisha even has a boyfriend!

There is one scene that gets pretty intense, but it was pretty intense in comparison to episodes one and two. This episode brought on a lot of questions. What’s the deal with Armando? What are his real intentions? What the heck happened between now and our present day scenes in the beginning of the episode? And most importantly: when does the shit in the fan (because I know it’s going to happen at some point)?