Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

#1 House of Night series
Copyright: 2007
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Young Adult
Pages: audio
Challenges: Young Adult Challenge, TBR challenge
Series website
My rating: 4.5/5

Simple Description: 
Zoey Redbird is a normal 16 year old, until she is marked.  Marked to be a vampire that is.  The tracker finds her at school, luckily it's towards the end of the day and she can go home without too many people seeing it.   Her Mom and step-dad don't like it and believe she needs to talk to a therapist and they call the prayer group together.  Zoey tries to get them to see that it's not something she asked for, but something that was done to her.   Luckily she is able to escape and go to her Grandma's house. She knows her Grandma will understand.

Before she can see her Grandma though, she falls and has a vision.  She wakes up in The House of Night, the place where all new vampires go.  Here she will go to school and learn about being a vampire.  Luckily her roommate is pretty cool.  Zoey hopes she can fit in here and make friends, but that's a bit hard.  Her mark is already colored in, something that doesn't happen for several years after being marked.  Soon Zoey finds there are other things different about her than the other fledglings. Before the story ends Zoey is going to find out just how different she is.

Now what you really want to know....my thoughts: 
I loved loved loved this book.  What a great start to a new YA series for me.  Sure, this is another vampire book, but I like that it's a different take on it.  You don't get bitten and become a vampire. Instead, well, they don't really know how one becomes a vampire or what causes one to become a vampire.  They just know that you are and somehow it's known and a tracker finds you and marks you.  

I think Zoey is a refreshing character.  She isn't totally ok with being a vampire, but thinks it's better than death which is her only other option.  She becomes more comfortable with the idea but still doesn't like everything about it.   I liked the character of Zoey, you can't help but feel sorry for what she deals with before she's marked and after she's marked you can't help but root for her.

I liked those who Zoey becomes friends with too.  They are a fun mix of characters, don't totally love them all, but I do like them.  Of course there is going to be one character that we aren't supposed to like, but even she isn't too bad.

This is definitely a series I'll continue with.

I do own this book, and while I did read part of it, I listened to the audio book for the majority of the story.  The narrator is Edwina Wren.  I had heard great things about this audio book, which is why I chose to listen to it instead of reading the whole book even though I already owned it.   The audio version didn't disappoint. Wren changes her voice and her tone and really makes it work for the listener.  If you like audio and these types of books, definitely think you should try and get your hands on a copy of this audio book.    In fact, I've already reserved a copy of the 2nd book in this series on audio from my library.



This book is part of my collection and was either bought or given to me. This audio book was rented from my local library.