The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was so excited to read this book after Bloodlines #1 – I love love love the Vampire Academy series and so I knew I was going to get sucked into this series as well and I totally felt that way after the first book.
Book two begins shortly after the end of book #1 – Sydney is still overseeing everyone at the boarding school in Palm Springs. It’s her job to hide Jill Dragomir from those that might cause her harm in order to disrupt her half-sister’s reign as queen of the Moroi. So they pose as students and hide at Amberwood Prep. The usual suspects are all here, Eddie, Jill, Adrian and we even get some of Dimitri and Sonya in this book! We also get some new characters that made for interesting plot development and I know we’ll be seeing them in books to come.
To be perfectly honest, this book started out slow for me. I had a hard time diving back into the world that Mead has created, but I plugged away and wasn’t disappointed. You know who made this book for me? Adrian… yup, I said Adrian. The evolution of his character from the Vamp Academy series to this current book is wonderful and good lord there were times I wanted to shake Sydney and tell her “you can’t be this blind … right?” He is going to be the one to make her realize that maybe things aren’t exactly as she had been taught.
I know the hang-up you Alchemist’s have with us, but is the loyalty to your own race so strong that… I don’t know… that the people themselves don’t matter?”
A valid question from Adrian if you ask me! Sydney,when we met her originally was very cut and dried… black and white.. right and wrong. With this series, and I think especially with this book, we are seeing more of her realization that life just isn’t that easy. She was raised to think certain things, and act certain ways and we saw a bit of that adjustment in Bloodlines, but even more so, her toeing the line of her beliefs in The Golden Lily.
One thing that I don’t quite get yet, and maybe that’s intentional, but Sydney’s body issues BUG THE CRAP out of me. There was one mention of her being a size 4 … and this made her unhappy. OH REALLY???
I get that she’s surrounded by people who are beautiful, skinny and perfect because they are Moroi, but seriously, she doesn’t want to drink a slushy because of the sugar and calories? Maybe her health issues and the way she views herself plays a bigger part for some odd reason down the road, but right now, every time she mentioned her looks I wanted to shake her. again. LOL
I don’t want to give away the plot and the twists and turns Mead takes to get there, so I won’t. The pace of the book does pick up and I did eventually get drawn back into the world of Moroi, Strigoi, Alchemists and humans so don’t give up! I’m really looking forward to book three based on where this one left off. If you haven’t read the Vampire Academy series – go do it now… then make your way over to the Bloodlines series. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with it!
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