Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

Title: Blood Promise (Vampire Academy #4)

Author: Richelle Mead

Publisher: Razorbill

Release Date: August 25, 2009

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Bound by love but sworn to kill...

The world thought Dimitri was dead. And to a certain extent he was. But I hadn’t been able to forget a conversation he and I had once had. We’d both agreed that we’d rather be dead--truly dead--than walk the world as Strigoi. It was time to honor our words.

Guardian Rose Hathaway’s life will never be the same. The recent attack on St. Vladimir’s Academy devastated the entire Moroi world. Many are dead. And, for the few victims carried off by the Strigoi, their fates are even worse. A rare tattoo now adorns Rose’s neck; a mark that says she’s killed far too many Strigoi to count.

But only one victim matters...Dimitri Belikov. Rose must now choose one of two very different paths: honoring her life’s vow to protect Lissa--her best friend and the last surviving Dragomir princess--or, dropping out of the Academy to strike out on her own and hunt down the man she loves. She’ll have to go to the ends of the earth to find Dimitri and keep the promise he begged her to make. But the question is, when the time comes, will he want to be saved?

Now, with everything at stake--and worlds away from St. Vladimir’s and her unguarded, vulnerable, and newly rebellious best friend--can Rose find the strength to destroy Dimitri? Or, will she sacrifice herself for a chance at eternal love?

****SPOILER ALERT!!! DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS BOOK OR THE PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE SERIES!!!****

I swear, these books just keep on getting better and better. Every time I finish one I think they just can’t get better, then I pick up the next one and have the same reaction all over again. Blood Promise was just as good as all the other books in the Vampire Academy series, if not even better. There is just something about these books that makes me love them so much more every time I finish one.

Now the Dimitri is turned Strigoi, Rose must go and find him so she can kill him and release his soul. They had both agreed that they would rather be dead than Strigoi and Rose wants to honor the promise she made to Dimitri in that car not so long ago. Now in Russia, Rose is not sure where she should go to find the man she loves, much less what she’ll do once she comes face to face with him. In theory, finding Dimitri and killing him should be easy because he is no longer the Dimitri she knew and loved but in reality, will killing the man she loves mean killing herself in the process?

Blood Promise was really different from the other books in the series, but different in a good way. Everything was that much more focused on Rose and with my love for Rose this made me a happy reader. Rose was very different in this book. She still had that reckless, impulsive nature but it wasn’t used to protect others but more to selfishly put herself in the face of unnecessary danger. But it was also nice to see her show her emotions more, especially when she found herself living with Dimitri’s family. Speaking of which, Dimitri’s family was great. It was so nice to see where he got so many of his qualities from and to learn more about his past. I loved how easily they accepted Rose and they could all so easily understand why Dimitri had loved her and how much she loved him. They were all really great women and I hope I see more of them, but I doubt that will happen.

I still can’t help but love Dimitri but this time I might have been more attracted to him because he became more the bad boy type. He wasn’t the same loving, kind but fierce man that Rose fell in love with and that I fell in love with. To be honest, sometimes he annoyed me like no other and was practically yelling at Rose to get a grip even though I knew there was no way she could hear me. At other times, Dimitri pretty much scared me but I still couldn’t help but hope it was all some big practical joke and he would return to being guardian Dimitri. Adrian on the other hand totally grew on me. He wasn’t the obnoxious, arrogant Adrian from the other book and you could tell he genuinely cared about what happened to Rose and what was happening to Lissa. And he totally made me laugh at the end of the book.

Blood Promise was just as good as all the other Vampire Academy books. I know I’m repeating myself, but I am so glad I finally decided to give this series a chance. Had I not, I would have totally missed out on some pretty awesome books. Now I just need to get to the bookstore and get myself a copy of Spirit Bound.

Book Blogger Hop (10) & Follow Friday (2)

Once again I am taking part in Book Blogger Hop, a weekly meme for book bloggers hosted by Jennifer over at Crazy-for-Books. Every week I get to meet lots of new and wonderful bloggers, and just that is reason enough to keep participating every week.

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION:

POST A LINK TO A FAVORITE POST OR BOOK REVIEW THAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS.

This is actually kind of hard, I'm not sure which is my favorite. And since I've been blogging for less than 3 months I can go with any of my reviews which makes it that much harder to choose. I'm going to have to go with my review of Perfect Chemisty by Simone Elkeles. It was the first of Elkeles's books that I read and essentially the one that made me fall in love with her writing and the characters she creates...may have something to do with my tendency to go for the bad boy type...

Last week I took part in Parajunkee's View's Follow Friday for the first time and since it went well I decided to take part in this meme once again this week.

That's it for this week. Happy hopping and following and enjoy your weekends!

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy #3)

Author: Richelle Mead

Publisher: Razorbill

Release Date: November 13, 2008

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

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.

Rose knows it is forbidden to love another guardian. Her best friend Lissa--the last Dragomir princess--must always come first. Unfortunately, when it comes to gorgeous Dimitri Belikov, some rules are meant to be broken...

Then a strange darkness begins to grow in Rose’s mind, and ghostly shadows warn of a terrible evil drawing nearer to the Academy’s iron gates. The immortal undead are closing in, and they want vengeance for the lives Rose has stolen. In a heat-stopping battle to rival her worst nightmares, Rose will have to choose between life, love, and the two people who matter most...but will her choice mean that only once can survive?

I love being able to read all the books from a series in a row, I just get so much more into it that way...well, until I run out of the books. I’m so glad I can do this with the Vampire Academy books because they are so amazing, I absolutely loved them. Now that I’m done reading Shadow Kiss, my love for these books has only grown. I don’t even know how to explain what it is about this series but they are really captivating and I never want to put them down (I’m actually forcing myself to write this review instead of starting to read the next one).

It’s time for the senior dhampirs to do their Field Experience, each of them is assigned a Moroi from the Academy to protect during 6 weeks and their performance has a lot to do in determining what happens after graduation. Of course Rose thinks Lissa will be assigned to her but has a shock when she hears that her friend Eddie gets Lissa and she is assigned Christian, Lissa’s boyfriend. Everything seems to be going well for Rose until she starts seeing Mason’s ghost, at this point thing go from bad to worse. A battle on the grounds of the Academy only heats things up that much more and by then end Rose just doesn’t know what to do anymore.

I’m sure by now you guys all know how much I love Rose and how amazing I think she is, so I’ll spare you. I’ll just say that my feelings about her are still the same after having read Shadow Kiss. What I won’t spare you from are my feelings for Dimitri. Oh how I love Dimitri, my love for him has just grown in this book. The way he cares about Rose and treats her just makes me wish sometimes that I was Rose. I loved how in this book he acted more on his feelings. I cannot tell you how happy I was when he and Rose finally gave in to their feelings about each other, it totally made my day. The only thing that made it even better was when he told her he had this whole plan figured out about how they could be together. But of course things just couldn’t be happy and good.

Oh how I wanted things to end well and for Rose and Dimitri to live happily ever after. But of course that didn’t happen, because, really, it never happens. I honestly thought everything was going to work out for them, especially since they both survived the Strigoi attack but the next events just had to go and ruin that. Don’t get me wrong, the story was amazingly good and I had nothing against the ending, I just wished it had ended differently. Despite though little details not being what I wanted them to be, I wouldn’t want the book to end any other way because that would just mean that there wouldn’t necessarily be a point to there being more books in the series. It’s really hard to give the ending away just because it’s so good but at the same time you can’t believe what happened actually happened.

My love for the Vampire Academy books just grows which each installment I read. Shadow Kiss was even better than Vampire Academy and Frostbite and so far is my favorite in the series. But that might just change once I finish reading Blood Promise, which I can’t wait to get more into.

Waiting on Wednesday (6)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine. Every week we talk about upcoming releases that we are looking forward to reading.

Here is my pick for this week:

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

From the publisher:

Adam, now a rising rock star, and Mia, a successful cellist, reunite in New York and reconnect after the horrific events that tore them apart when Mia almost died in a car accident three years earlier.

A few weeks back I read If I Stay (review here) and absolutely loved it. I was pleasantly surprised by the book and was even happier to find out that a sequel, Where She Went, would be coming out next year. I'm really looking forward to this release and looking forward to reconnecting with Mia and everyone else in her world.

Where She Went will be published by Dutton Juvenile in April 2011.

On a different note:

Classes are starting up for me tomorrow so things will most likely slow down around here...that is unless you guys really want to hear all about Communications and Political Science, which I doubt you do. I will try to keep posting at least a review each week, but some weeks might be busier than others. Hopefully things will work out and I'll still have a good amount of time to read.

Frostbite by Richelle Mead

Title: Frostbite (Vampire Academy #2)

Author: Richelle Mead

Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: April 10, 2008

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

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.

Rose has serious guy trouble. Her gorgeous tutor, Dimitri, has his eyes on someone else, her friend Mason has a huger crush on her, and she keeps getting stuck in her best friend Lissa’s head while she’s making out with her boyfriend, Christian.

Then a nearby Strigoi attack puts St. Vladimir’s on high alert, and the Academy whisks its students away on a mandatory holiday ski trip. But the glittering winter landscape and posh Idaho resort only provide the illusion of safety When three students run away to strike back against the deadly Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. Only this time, Rose--and her heart--are in more danger than she ever could have imagined...

I was glad that I had Frostbite waiting for me when I finished Vampire Academy because I definitely wanted to know what was going to be happening next. This book was as good a read as the previous one and made me that much more happy that I finally decided to pick up this series. I have to admit, that I liked Frostbite better than the first book in the series, I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but this one did something that just had me wanting more from start to finish.

Rose thought the only thing she had to worry about was her feelings for her mentor Dimitri but a Strigoi attack nearby changes all that. Not only is everyone on high alert but she also has more boy troubles than she originally thought. Dimitri seems to be interested in someone else, her good friend Mason is crazy about her but she doesn’t care about him that way and to make things worse she keeps getting stuck in Lissa’s head whenever she’s making out, or more, with her boyfriend Christian. Thing should be interesting for Rose as the Academy students are sent to a ski resort in Idaho as a way to keep them safe from more possible Strigoi attacks.

What I like about series is how you can see the characters change throughout each of the books. I already liked Rose at the end of Vampire Academy, but now I like her even more. You can really see how much she’s changed from the first to the second book, and most of these changes are for the best. I love seeing her struggle with her boy situation not because I want to see her struggling but because I’ve been in her situation before. Well, if you take out the part about getting stuck in your best friend’s head when she’s getting hot and heavy with her boyfriend. But that aside, I have totally been in her position. Rose isn’t completely changed, she still has that impulsive, sarcastic and reckless side to her that makes me crack up every so often. My feelings about Rose being a great female lead character have only been reinforced. I liked Lissa better this time around, she was able to stand up for herself and we see a whole new side of her appear and I really liked seeing that happen.

Dimitri still sounded pretty amazing in this book too. You can tell that he really cares about Rose but sometimes his words and his actions don’t really match up. But by the end of the book he makes up his mind on many things and I only like him that much more by that point. Mason was still there, still really amusing and still crazy about Rose. I liked him more in this book than the previous, but that might just have to do with the fact that we learn more about him. I loved finding out more about him and I just got really attached to him, to the point that he almost made me cry towards the end of the book. Christian I liked a lot more than I did in Vampire Academy, you can really tell he cares about Lissa and I loved seeing the relationship between him and Rose develop.

Overall, I have to say I liked Frostbite a lot more than Vampire Academy. The story got moving faster and there were different sub-plots that made it that much more interesting to read. The story was fast paced and right from the start there was a good deal of action. I’m saying the same thing I said when I finished the first book, I’m glad I bought the first four books all at once because I started Shadow Kiss as soon as I finished Frostbite.