In an effort to find something else to read – I have read through the Twilight series at least 4 times now – I stumbled across a book called NightWorld.  There are a couple of books available in this series.  Also, there are three different books contained within the book.  (hmmm…  books within books?  Did that make sense? I hope so!)

Anyway, on to NightWorld, by L.J. Smith…  Have you seen the movie Fight Club, or at least do you know the first rule of Fight Club?  “There is no such thing as Fight Club.”  So, carrying on with that theme, there is no such thing as NightWorld.  Even more importantly, NightWorld folks (which range from Vampires, to Witches, to Werewolves, etc.) are absolutely forbidden to fall in love with a human.  In Volume One, Book One of NightWorld we meet a vampire, James, whose best friend, Poppy, is a human – who finds out she had a terminal disease.  Was I really surprised when our fanged friend revealed he was in love with his best friend and decided to give her a pair of fangs of her own?  No, not really.  So now these two have broken both the NightWorld rules AND have been exposed by another vampire.  Will their love survive?  Yeppers, not only do they not get busted, but it turns out there is some witchy blood in our heroine’s veins therefore making everything all better.  I hate to break it to you, but this entire book is set up like this.

In Volume One, Book Two we have another vampire who falls in love with a human, Mary-Lynette.  Here’s the twist – they hate each other.  Huh?  Okay, within NightWorld you have Soul Mates (kind of like Jacob imprinting on Nessie) – so these two imprint or connect with each other and have to figure out what to do.  Our vampire (Ashe) is somewhat arrogant, highly immature, and a stickler for NightWorld rules.  As a side note one of Ashe’s sisters falls for the little brother of his Soul Mate & they get along perfectly (this would be Jade & Mark).  Okay, back to Ashe…  long story short they beat the bad guys & our two star crossed Soul Mates end up falling for each other after all.  However, Ashe decides he must earn his Soul Mate’s love & banishes himself until he grows up a little.  His three sisters (Ooops, did I tell you he had three sisters?  Okay, Ashe has three sisters – Rowan, Kerstrel & Jade.) stay in the little town and live happily ever after. 

On to Volume One, Book Three…  WITCHES!  Not that we don’t love our Vampires – I mean the site is called It’s FANGtasitc after all, but with this book the vamps were – well lame.  So, Witches – cousins raised like sisters – one who is a goody goody and one who is…  well…  not.  So who will fall in love with the human in this book?  In this case our good girl breaks the rules, big time!  She falls in love with a human boy – and she releases a vengeful spirit intent on killing teenagers at a Halloween party.  Thea (our good witch whose been bad) gets found out & is sentenced to forget she was ever a witch, along with her Soul Mate who will forget he ever heard about NightWorld.  Ready for our twist?  Our bad witch (Blaise) switches out the potion!

So where does that leave us?  On the whole I give this first volume of NightWorld a Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.  I am hopeful that volume two will pick up the stories and give them a little more depth, or provide us with new stories, also with a little more depth.  The stories are highly condensed, but pretty much as soon as the story starts to get interesting it is over.  This also leaves us with a lot of characters to remember as most over lap within the three books.  This is a good, quick read – the kind of book that you could bring to the pool or beach and zip through while tanning your back.