Darkest Before Dawn: A Guardian's Diary Book One

Liked the spin that vampires and werewolves have to work together to protect humans. I'm unsure about the sentinel story line because there wasn't much information given about their impact. Definately waiting for next book.

Amelia Hutchins is so great at weaving a story that keeps you entranced from cover to cover unable to put the book down. You'll be coming back for more books and screaming at the end of the book for dates for the next one! Love The Fae Chronicles and I love this new series just as much!

I loved The Fae Chronicles! I thought Amelia Hutchins had a great imagination and her characters were pretty solid. Then I started reading The Guardian's Diary Book series. I couldn't even finish the first one, Darkest Before Dawn, although I got about 90% through. It started out great! I loved Emma's character at first. She was pretty badass and the post-apocalyptic story line was intriguing. Also, I loved that Hutchins added a paranormal twist to it by including werewolves and vampires. Two things I don't love, however: First and foremost the sex wasn't believable. I don't want to put any spoilers in this so let's just say that Emma goes through some pretty bad events and immediately after Jaeden is all rubbing up on her telling her he's going to destroy her lady bits. Dumb. I get having sex as a distraction to horrible events but this happened every single time. It got pretty ridiculous. Even I was saying back the hell off, Jaeden! You don't want to have to envision telling the main hot guy character no. It puts a damper on the whole heartthrob element. Secondly, this story was WAYYYYY to close to Twilight. You have a werewolf and a vampire fighting over the outcast female. The vampire has to leave suddenly and the werewolf moves in on the female. The female begins relying on the werewolf more and more to get her through. And ... the moment I ended up saying THIS IS RIDICULOUS was when the crazy vampire (Cayla) latches on to Emma and tells her they are going to be great friends, she just knows it! (Hello Alice?!) Way too many similarities to Twilight. So many that I had to look at when this book was published and when Twilight was published, thinking maybe this one came out first. (It didn't) The author even references Twilight in her book! I rarely, RARELY give bad reviews on books because I respect and appreciate all storytellers but I really hate it when authors copy someone else's work so explicitly. And that's what it seems happened with this story.

I thought it was an enjoyable read. The only minor issue I had was the relationship between the main character and the main love interest is intense but it started to get very off and on, the conflicting feelings between them did make me feel some what frustrated as a reader but other than that a great read for any PR fan.

I was really excited at the beginning of the story, and then I felt like I was in a crazy ping pong romance. He says, "I have to have you." She says, "no." And it keeps going on and on throughout. I wish Jaeden was a bit more of a "man" that kept saying he was, rather than a sex crazed control freak. I really liked the premise of Emma's character, and her strength. I also liked the mix of the story. Again, it has a lot going for it, but a bit too much ping pong "yes" and "no" going on.

End of days. Action aplenty. Awesome characters. Steamy passion.

There were a few times when I thought Emma was annoying, but her reasons why is understandable. The build up was frustrating, but worth it. I cannot wait for the next book.