The Emerald Talisman by Brenda Pandos

 About the book:

To be normal, sixteen-year-old Julia Parker would shed her empathic gift in a second. Life has been difficult since her mother's mysterious disappearance ten years earlier - an event she witnessed, but can't remember. Julia's situation becomes more complicated after a near death experience from a blood thirsty stalker. As high school students go missing it is clear there is a connection to her own experience--past and present. Someone has to stop the madness and a chance encounter with a creepy psychic foretells that only Julia is the key to stopping the madness, but it may require the life of the one she loves.
My Review:

 I downloaded this book from amazon because it was on the top 100 free list. I actually downloaded it because of the cover and I had no clue what the book was even about. I started reading it and was not sure at first, where this story would go. But then it drew me in and I found myself caught up in this story of Julia Parker. She has a special ability to read other people's emotions but she has never told anyone. Her mother disappeared when she was five and no one knows what happened to her.
Then on her way home from work, she runs out of gas and her cell phone is dead. Should she walk down the road to her house or take the short-cut through the woods? She decides to cut through the woods and that decision changes the course of her life permanently.
She feels someone's emotions and they want to kill her. She runs and trips and falls. She catches a branch or she would have fallen down a cliff. She starts screaming for help and someone comes and fights whoever or whatever wanted to kill her. Then he rescues her and Julia finds herself really liking this guy in a short amount of time. I won't ruin the story because it is a good one; I will simply say that you have to read the rest to find out where it goes.
A couple of things to consider: 1) This is a vampire book. 2) It can be consider a spin-off of Twilight (although I think it has it's own original story) and 3) This is a series of three books.
I give this book 3.5 to 4 stars. I like vampire books and I liked this story enough to read it in about a day. Hopefully the second and third books are even better than this one :)

Source:  Publisher