Summary:
ONLY A TRUE BEST FRIEND CAN PROTECT YOU FROM YOUR IMMORTAL ENEMIES…
Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth’s magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest vampires – the ones who never die. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa’s best friend, makes her a dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them.
After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir’s Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be, hidden in the deep forests of Montana. But inside the iron gates, life is even more fraught with danger… and the Strigoi are always close by.
Rose and Lissa must navigate their dangerous world, confront the temptations of forbidden love, and never once let their guard down, lest the evil undead make Lissa one of them forever…
Thoughts:
MY THOUGHTS ARE SO MIXED ON THIS BOOK ARGH. I went into this book thinking this is my jam, not only do I love vampires but I’m all about the drama that might come along with a book set in a high school academy, bring it on. And yet it took me forever to get in to this one. Honestly, if I weren’t reading this for a square on my reading bingo challenge I would have DNF’ed it about 30% of the way into it. BUT. We’ll get to the ‘but’ in a bit.
Things started off bad about 20 pages in when I had to side-eye the fuck out of this book after reading this part:
That genetic combination had given me skin the same color as the inside of an almond, along with what I liked to think were semi-exotic desert-princess features
I mean….really? LOL okay. *insert giant eye-roll here*
The worst part for me is that I started off really disliking the POV character, Rose. She’s overbearing and controlling and she seems like she’s in some kind of bad mood for absolutely no reason. Once you get beyond the first few pages you get the feeling that Rose and Lissa are not so much best friends as…well…not friends but some kind of people who are forced to be together due to this one-way psychic bond they share. Rose seems awfully nonchalant about the bond too, even though it keeps making her violate her friend’s privacy. Then just straight up tells Lissa what to do, ordering her around. I get that she’s worried but I don’t think that’s how a true friend should behave so I kind of hated her for a while. Like, a loooong while. Like 45-ish percent of the book. And Lissa doesn’t like being told what to do (because who does?), but isn’t quite avoiding being a doormat either, at least not for a while. It’s like she’s torn between brushing Rose off and doing her own thing and caving in to Rose’s demands. It makes for a weird dynamic.
BUT THEN.
Damn this book pulling me in! In an effort to not give away too much of the plot ‘stuff happens’. Lissa is clearly being targeted but you’re not sure if it’s just mean girls at school mad that Lissa’s back and might steal their boyfriends or if it’s something more sinister at play. Meanwhile, Rose is an asshole but then realizing she’s wrong about some things actually kind of apologizes and starts being slightly less of an asshole? Respect, I guess. Some background stuff is revealed over the course and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t liking Rose by the end of this. SIGH. I was prepared to fully hate this book but now I can’t because I actually enjoyed the last half of it, a lot. The characters and the way they act suddenly made sense and all kinds of things started falling into place for me. And also because I’m me I’m like ‘omg what’s going to happen between Rose and Dimitri???’ at the same time fully agreeing with Dimitri’s assessment of the situation because, yeah, she’s still in high school, dude!
There is some world-building stuff in here regarding the vampires and guardians that, quite frankly, still doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me, but I guess I’m going to give that a pass for now. At the end of the day, the book picked up when it needed to and got me hooked. And now I’m stuck wanting to read the next one. DAMMIT. I just hope the next one doesn’t start off as slow and that Rose continues to improve her likability factor. 3.5/5 stars.
Way Too Fantasy 
I hope you enjoy the next book more. I really enjoyed the series when I read it. I do have agree that Rose can be annoying though. Whatever you do, do not watch the movie adaptation! It is so bad.
Good to know! I think I’ll probably enjoy the next books more than the first one just because it took me a while to warm up to the characters here but now I’ve come around. 🙂
I binged this series when I read it. Had a bad book hangover at the end lol
LOL I’ll prepare myself. 🙂
I read this one YEARS ago and I remember feeling the same way about the main character but also being pulled in to the story! Great review!
Thanks! Yeah it definitely pulled me right in. Frankly I’m surprised it took me so long to read this one because I love vampires!
I was hoping to pick this up and will still get around to it, but with a bit of apprehension though, given your review.👏👏
It wasn’t completely terrible, it just took me a long while to get into it. I think the next book in the series might be a better read for me but we’ll see. 🙂
Yes, the second book could be better. It does happen like that often. Thanks
Yeah, finding things to love about books you want to hate is so crazy! I don’t think I’ve ever read this, but I do have a copy somewhere😁
I really wanted to hate this one LOL. But I guess I’m kind of glad I kept reading except now I have even more books in my TBR
It’s a weird one, isn’t it? I did enjoy it, but maybe not enough to keep reading the series, and I was fully aware that it was one of those books everyone thinks is a bit of a trashy guilty pleasure 😀 but damn if it isn’t entertaining to read!
It was definitely entertaining! I’m just so mixed on it.
Definitely a series that I warmed up to. Rose makes a lot of mistakes as this series progresses. A LOT.
Lynn 😀
Lol, I will prepare myself then haha. 🙂
Ooooh after the almond-skin exotic princess description I thought it was gonna be one of *those* books & the main protagonist would be a giant Mary Sue haha. But I’m glad it did a turn for the better and you actually enjoyed it!
Yeah I don’t know how she managed to turn it around in the end but kudos to her for that lol. Thanks!
I hope for your that this series keeps improving! That self-indulgent description at page 20 would have compelled me to throw the book in the darkest corner of the house! 😀
Right! When I came up across that I was like ‘breathe Lisa’ because I was tempted to throw the book myself LOL. Thanks, I hope it continues to improve too. 🙂
Lol! That’s about how I felt about it too. Ended up liking Rose a bit by the end and I actually got caught up in the story. I initially intended to continue with the next book but got distracted by other things. I don’t think I ever will though.
I did also like the bit about the saints. I thought that was interesting.
Yeah, the saint stuff in intriguing. I’ll probably continue with the series but I have some other things I need to get through first. 🙂
LOL I love this review! I don’t know if it makes me want to read this even more now or if it’s made me decide that I’m not going to give it a go 😂 I’ve seen this series mentioned EVERYWHERE on the blogosphere and it seems to be a lot of peoples’ favourite. I’m still curious but perhaps I won’t be racing to pick it up anytime soon! Haha
I’ve been enjoying it even though it makes me laugh at it and sometimes roll my eyes haha!