Dark Beginnings Series #1: Elizabeth's Betrayal By Rebecca Weeks

*I received a ARC of the book from the author in exchange of a honest review*

Published: September 1st 2014 by W&B Publishing

Goodreads Summary: 1666: A young girl named Elizabeth is cursed with vampirism after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her innocence stolen, the centuries pass and she has evolved into a monster.

In present day England she meets Jordan and instead of becoming yet another of her victims, she feels something for him, something not felt for over a hundred years. But will the return of the warlock Lorcan destroy everything? 

Dark beginnings is Book One in an enthralling trilogy; Dark tales filled with black magic, voodoo, warlocks, witches, Limnades and vampires. In a world where everyone believes these creatures don't exist, will anyone be safe from the evil that humans have forgotten?

-MY THOUGHTS- 

There are books that are great even though the ideas at the basis of their plot and characters have been used times and times again. And then, there are these other books which are innovative, break free from stereotypes and yet fall flat nonetheless.

In my opinion, Elizabeth’s Betrayal, the first book in the Dark Beginning series by Rebecca Weeks belongs to the second category.

Elisabeth’s Betrayal wasn’t actually what I expected it would be. I expected City of Bones, but I got Beautiful Creatures. The plot is centred on a love story like you can only see in romance books or in movies between Elizabeth and Jordan. Even though I’m not a fan of romance book, I didn’t mind that fact. 

Elizabeth, a vampire is the main character in the book. Our girl’s main goal in the book is to catch a Limnade, a nautical magical creature which would give immortality to her maid, friend and confidante Cecile. Elizabeth is a woman who carries her business like a Wall Street wolf. When she needs to kill, she kills, when she needs to flee, she flees and when she needs to use someone, she uses him to the core. 

Yet, when she meets Jordan, she starts second guessing herself and feels something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Elizabeth was the type of character I was looking for in a novel. In 1666, a then young, sweet, innocent Elizabeth is unfortunately turned into a vampire. After century of loneliness, having to kill people to feed on their blood, when we meet our heroine, she is somewhat of a cold-hearted, ruthless ice princess. I liked this evolution. I found it realistic and refreshing. 

I liked that Elizabeth wasn’t your typical selfless Mary Sue, I liked that Jordan wasn’t your typical clueless human and I enjoyed that chapters alternated between past and present. But in spite of those positive points, I had some trouble finishing Elizabeth’s Betrayal.

The characters needed to be fleshed out more. For example after hundreds pages I still didn’t know what Elizabeth liked or disliked, I don’t know what her hobbies were. And even thought she kept mentioning that she had enemies, I never got a glimpse of who they were. Besides, they lacked emotion. Jordan’s sister went missing before the novel starts and his mom is depressed but he seems to be ok with both facts. He’s more eager to go out with Elizabeth than to search for his little sister O_O.  

Relationship between characters seemed forced and almost superficial to me. Let’s take Elizabeth and Jordan love story. The lovebirds never really had any heart to heart conversation where one revealed something very personal to the other. They didn’t even talk about their respective hobbies (which is the basics when dating a new person). They didn’t do any activities with each other. And strangely, most of the time they spent together was at Elisabeth’s home. 

It was annoying for two reasons. I couldn’t stop wondering when the hell would they go to the cinema, have a walk in the park, eat at a nice little restaurant or do any these things that any normal couple do. Furthermore, since most of the scenes were almost always in the same location, I never really felt like I discovered the city the characters were living in.

And bottom line except for her incredible beauty, I truly couldn’t get why Jordan was so attracted to the century old vampire.

I might have liked the idea behind Elizabeth’s personality but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed the end result. She was selfish, manipulative, bitchy and backstabbing. However, she wasn’t like a Scarlett O’Hara, there was nothing interesting or endearing about her in my opinion. 

As for Elycan (Elizabeth and Lorcan), well Lorcan kept proclaiming his love for the vampire and his devotion to her. And that’s about it. There was no development in their relationship. 

The first part of the book was actually alright, I genuinely wanted to know how everything would work out. Unfortunately, the second part was all other the place. The main villain was uninteresting and unbelievable, the plot seemed to go in every possible direction and everything felt rushed and lacked explanation. Besides, I thought Elizabeth was kind of useless.

There were some nice and surprising twist and turn in the first instalment of the Dark Beginning series. But to be fairly honest, I thought the characters, dialogues, plot and world in Elizabeth’s Betrayal needed to be fleshed out more.