Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout

*There will be spoilers. A lot. So many that I'm not going to hide them behind spoiler tags. You've been warned.
Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Series: Covenant #1
Release Date:  October 18th 2011
Pages: 281
Genres: Romance, YA, Fantasy.
Websites: Author Amazon(Com)  Amazon(UK) 

Blurb: 'The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi–pure bloods–have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals–well, not so much.

Half-bloods only have two options: become trained sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures.

Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:

Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden.

Unfortunately, she’s crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn’t her biggest problem–staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden.

And that would kind of suck.'

Cover: The cover of this book is really magical. Probably the best bit of the book.

Plot: Oh my god the plot of this book killed me, and not in a good way. If Ms Armentrout could have stolen any more ideas from Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy, I would be seriously surprised. I was so disappointed. I love you Jennifer Armentrout but after coming from the AMAZING Lux Series to this... I have to say a few tears were shed. The novel is based in this world where the descendants of Greek Gods roam. We have the Pure-bloods, the Half-Bloods and the Daimons(pronounced dee-muns). The Pures are directly descended from Gods and Pures, the Halfs from Gods/Pures and Humans and the Daimons, from what I can gather, are just evil versions of the above. Sounding familiar anyone? In the first scene we see the Heroine, Rose Alex, being brought back to the academy 'Covenant' after leaving for three years and living among humans with her best friend mother. It revolves around her hopes to get back in to the Covenant by training hard with Dimitri Aiden, the kickass Pure blood Sentinel.

Likes: Much for the same reason I fell in love with Dimitri, I fell in love with Aiden. He's handsome, clever, kind and just generally badass. I loved Alex and Aiden's relationship. I nearly died when he found her in that last scene. I missed VA, and with this, I felt I could get back into a 'similar' world.

Dislikes: The plagerism. Let's start with characters and then we'll move on to scenes and plot-lines.
Characters: (VA on left, HB on right)
Rose = Alex
Dimitri = Aiden
Mia = Lea
Mason = Caleb
Adrian = Deacon
Jesse = Jackson
Lissa = Seth (They have a bond!)

Scenes:

1. Opening Scene where guardians sentinels bring Rose Alex back to Covenant.
2. Various Fight Scenes with Aiden are the exact same as Rose/Dimitri scenes.
3. Dhampirs Half-bloods half to learn to fight/defend moroi Pures.
4. Pures have control over one of the five elements and Halfs are excellent physical fighters. 
5. Lea's parents die because of a Daimon attack and Mia's parents a Strigoi attack. Come on!
6. Alex is dying to work with knives/daggers, Rose was dying to work with silver stakes.
7. Plot-line about Daimons starting to work in groups. Seriously?
8. Scene where Aiden and Alex nearly go all the way, but only to be interrupted leaving Alex naked in his bed.

There are too many similarities for this to be a coincidence. Not to mention that the only super secret 'twist' in the plot-line *SPOILER*(the one about Alex being the next Solaris), I guessed would happen the first time they mentioned Apollyon. That wasn't a twist. 

My Notes: This is a new segment where I share with you the notes I made whilst reading this book on my nook. Consider it me sharing my thoughts as I was reading. There will be spoilers so beware.

• Pure bloods, half bloods and daimons. Sounds like VA.
• 'What are you?' True Blood moment!
• I'm liking this Aiden guy more and more.
• 'I can work with her.' F**k it's VA all over again.
• Didn't Rose want to learn how Silver stakes worked? Alex and daggers.. Humm.. Suspicious.
• There's the 'You're still a kid' convo again.
• 'Can't afford to have that potential wasted.' We can't afford to lose another dhampir. Especially a girl.
• Lea or Mia?
• Dimitri reads whilst Rose trains too.
• Deacon reminds me of Adrian.
• I love the way Aiden cares so much for Alex (Jeez I nearly wrote Rose there!) and he really shouldn't.
• Lea and Mia's parents suffered similar fates.
• The 'I could be mentally ill' conversation, which they have in VA.

Verdict: Looking back on my review it sounds like I didn't enjoy this book. I did. I liked the book. It probably would have been one of my favourite books if I had never read Vampire Academy. But I did read VA so I just found it so hard to get past the extremely 'coincidental' (I'm sure) similarities. Jen, I still love you as an author, I find you extremely talented so I apologise for this review. Sorry. I'm going to give it a 6/10, because my feelings about this book are really up in the air. I probably will read the second book, in spite of the dislikes.

Fave Quotes: 'There is nothing like a bunch of catty teenagers who could either kick your ass halfway across the country or set you on fire with a mere thought.'

I am a firm JLA believer(she's good people), but seriously, why?

 If you've read this book feel free to link your reviews in the comments :)

Until next time x