After the world was ravaged by a viral apocalypse, Blackwater is one of the only colonies that remains. The survivors came together to create this safe haven. Nestled between a fierce river and a city’s flood wall, the well-being of its residents hangs on a long-established treaty with the night-walkers. Sounds simple enough, but lately, the people of Blackwater have been dying, and the humans believe the night-walkers are to blame. 
Porschia Grant starves for more than her parents’ affection. Forced to enter the rotation, she will be given extra food rations in exchange for becoming a vampire’s breakfast and dinner for a week. The rotation has an extra responsibility as well: leave the colony and enter the dangerous forest to hunt for food. A night-walker will protect the hunters from the infected that roam the woods. But with the treaty hanging in the balance and tension between the humans and vampires rising, anything could happen in the darkness.
What would you do if your only chance at survival might kill you?

Frenzy has been on my kindle for a criminally long time, I’d heard great things about the series but I wasn’t really in a vampire mood; for a pretty long time I have to say. Having read and enjoyed a couple of vampire based stories of late I thought I would jump in.

I’m glad to say that it wasn’t vampiretastic and there was a really great balance between humans, vampires, and infected that worked well. Vampires in an apocalypse is not a new scenario but as it’s not done often it felt fresh as a storyline. Porschia is a great character, she is strong but with a lot of weight on her shoulders. Each day becomes more of a struggle for the colonists as fewer and fewer resources remain available – her sense of doing what’s needed for the colony is high, driven partially by guilt but also by a need to escape her cruel mother, she does what is needed in dire circumstances.

The story moves pretty rapidly and the writing style is punchy, there are some great twists and you’re never sure if you’re rooting for the right person – so I just rooted for Porschia and the boys can fight it out between them! There is clearly something more to Porschia, all the vamps want to feed from her and there’s a bit of alpha going on with it, but it’s never too much for the story which carefully sidesteps the cliche. I was totally drawn into the world which left a lot to the reader to imagine, normally this is a bit of a no no for me but I think because of the fast pace, not becoming bogged down in lore worked well.

Where did it fall down for me then? Honestly, it felt like I had only read half a book by the end. So much had been done to build up the characters and situations but all that then felt like it was done to set up books in what is, I have discovered, a 6 book series. I had just become invested in the characters and then it ended on a cliffy just when the action got started. I have to say I felt a little cheated, which is such a shame as the story for me was going amazing places.

I would love to continue on with the series but I’m not sure at the moment that I’m up for a lot of short cliffhanger reads that I’ll get to in a piecemeal fashion.  It’s got amazing potential though and for that I will award 4*