REVIEW: Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

I know I said I was going to post my Bloodlines review and my Golden Lily review a while ago, but better late than never. 

Now, if there's one thing you should know before reading this, it's how much I LOVED the Vampire Academy series. The world was interesting, the characters were interesting, everything worked. Even when I was disappointed in a character's decision, I at least never thought it was out of character.

Bloodlines.... not so much. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

And I really don't like giving negative reviews, but unfortunately this book deserved it :(

I was disappointed for a number of reasons:

First off, I just didn't like Sydney. I thought she was very annoying and quite frankly infuriating with all this nonsense over her fear of using magic, vampires, etc. I get that characters need time to develop, but Sydney's spinelessness and inability to break free of the Alchemist teachings were too much to handle for an ENTIRE book. I started reading The Golden Lily (aka book 2,) and while she may not be as spineless, Sydney is still struggling with this idea of magic and vampires as friends and it's getting REALLY old.

At the end of the day, I just kept thinking that Rose from VA was a much better narrator than Sydney. Rose is fierce, and the things she struggled with were just more enthralling than the boring and annoying issues in Sydney's life that Mead keeps rehashing over and over and over.

The only redeeming quality about Bloodlines, besides getting to see how Rose and Dimitri are doing, was Adrian. It was nice to have more focus on him; I just love his character. His snarkiness and vices make him seem so relatable and not to mention swoon worthy. However, once I started reading The Golden Lily, I also grew annoyed with him because I felt some of his actions were very out of character! His developing relationship with Sydney literally made me stop reading the book because I couldn't stand a lame character like Sydney getting together with such a fascinating character like Adrian. 

Bloodlines was a decent book but unfortunately it fell short of a lot of my expectations. Mead set the bar very high with the Vampire Academy series, especially with characters like Rose, Dimitri, Christian and Adrian, and I just found Bloodlines really hard to like. It didn't help that Bloodlines does not stand on its own. Mead might as well have just called it the 7th VA novel but with a different, weaker, narrator. This was another reason it was hard for me to not make comparisons with VA- Bloodlines itsn't really a different series!  Do yourself a favor and don't bother reading Bloodlines, and ESPECIALLY The Golden Lily if you want the good stuff from Vampire Academy to remain intact.