The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead: Book Review

Hello Everyone! I'm going to share my book review on The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead today. I finished reading this book a few days ago and I really enjoyed this book. I am a HUGE fan of Richelle Mead, she is a fantastic writer and the Bloodlines series is becoming one of my favorites. I absolutely love the Vampire Academy series so I was really excited when Richelle wrote a spin off series to Vampire Academy and I loved the first book Bloodlines as well.

While reading The Golden Lily,  I had forgot a lot of what happened in the first book so I was kind of confused at what was going on, but through each book (vampire academy as well) the author does a good job of explaining things from the previous books when necessary so it was easy to catch on when reading. Also- if you have not read Bloodlines then there could be some spoilers here! Now onto my review!!

Summary from Goodreads:
Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.

Sydney would love to go to college, but instead, she’s been sent into hiding at a posh boarding school in Palm Springs, California–tasked with protecting Moroi princess Jill Dragomir from assassins who want to throw the Moroi court into civil war. Formerly in disgrace, Sydney is now praised for her loyalty and obedience, and held up as the model of an exemplary Alchemist.

But the closer she grows to Jill, Eddie, and especially Adrian, the more she finds herself questioning her age–old Alchemist beliefs, her idea of family, and the sense of what it means to truly belong. Her world becomes even more complicated when magical experiments show Sydney may hold the key to prevent becoming Strigoi—the fiercest vampires, the ones who don’t die. But it’s her fear of being just that—special, magical, powerful—that scares her more than anything. Equally daunting is her new romance with Brayden, a cute, brainy guy who seems to be her match in every way. Yet, as perfect as he seems, Sydney finds herself being drawn to someone else—someone forbidden to her.

When a shocking secret threatens to tear the vampire world apart, Sydney’s loyalties are suddenly tested more than ever before. She wonders how she's supposed to strike a balance between the principles and dogmas she's been taught, and what her instincts are now telling her.

Should she trust the Alchemists—or her heart?

Like I said before, I really enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed it better then the first book mainly because of the ending. This book pretty much picks up from the last one with Sydney as the main character. I love all of the characters in this book as well, and it was nice to see how Sydney is developing a more personal friendship with all of them as she is working to help protect Jill. Since Sydney is an Alchemist, she works to protect the human world from Vampires, but since Alchemist don't like Vampires and think everything about this existence is wrong she isn't suppose to be too involved. Through the book Sydney really learns that Humans can be more dangerous then Vampires and as her relationships with them grows she starts to question everything she was taught to know. I was also happy that Dimitri played a bigger told in this book as well. He was in the story a lot and he is one of my favorite characters. This book didn't feature Rose or Lissa at all, so I was happy to see another of one of the previous main characters back.

I thought the plot in this book was a little slow and I was really wanting so more action but the story and characters made up for that a lot. I absolutely love Adrian. He is probably my favorite character in the book. Now while I always liked him in Vampire Academy as well, I was definitely team Dimitri in the whole Rose love triangle relationship. Now since that is all done and over with, Adrian has become my favorite character. I really like Sydney as well, I think she is a strong female character but sometimes I just want to slap her because she won't let herself listen to her heart. Which I won't explain because I don't want to give away any spoilers.

The ending to this book was so amazing and it just leaves you hanging! I love endings like this that are anticipating but I hate waiting for the next book to be released to find out what happens. The ending of this book was what I have been waiting for this entire series :) I was so sad that I couldn't have more because the book ended. I absolutely can not wait for The Indigo Spell to come out!

I definitely gave this book a 5/5 stars on goodreads. I put off reading it for so long because I forgot what happened in Bloodlines. I'm happy that I finally decided to read it because I fell in love with Richelle Mead's writing and the whole Vampire Academy / Bloodlines world all over again!

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my review!

Book Haul #2

Hello Everyone! I wanted to share a book haul here on my blog of all the books that I recently purchased. Most of them are from Barnes and Nobel, I can not help myself when I go in there from buying too many books. Please ignore the horrible lighting on the picture below! I took it when it was dark in my house and apparently I don't have very good lighting ahh!!

The first book I purchased was The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling. I got this one last week the day after it came out. I was super excited about this book because I was unaware that J.K was releasing another book! It was totally unexpected, so like a little fan girl I freaked out and went and bought the book. I can't wait to read it, and I will probably be starting it some time this weekend.

The Hobbit book that you see in the picture is actually an illustrated edition of the book and it is like a graphic novel. They had a huge display at Barnes and Nobel of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm a huge fan of LOTR and I thought this edition of The Hobbit was pretty cool. I have not read all of the actual book, so I may read this graphic novel edition first.

I also picked up another John Green book which is Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I recently read The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska and loved them both. I plan to read all of John Green's books so this one will be next on my list!

I was really excited when I seen Whispers at Moonrise by C.C. Hunter, which is the 4th book in the Shadow Falls series. I totally forgot it came out this month and I absolutely love this series so I was so happy when I seen it.

Lastly, I picked up The Iron Legends by Julie Kagawa. This is a collection of three novellas from the Iron Fey series. I do want to read this but I don't think I will be reading it anytime soon. I don't exactly remember what happens in all of the books so I might get confused when I read the novellas because they are short stories in between the books in the series. I pretty much just wanted it to have it as part of my series collection LOL. It is on my fall TBR list though, so hopefully I will get around to reading it sometime this fall.

I hope you all enjoyed my book haul and thanks for reading!

September Wrap up

Last month in September I only read 3 books again. I read Tilt by Ellen Hopkins, Venomous by Christopher Krovatin, and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. However even though I only read three books, I read about 200 pages of A Game of Thrones, which I started at the end of August. I put down that book so I could read different ones because it was taking me forever to read. I hope to finally finish it this month in October.

I really enjoyed Tilt by Ellen Hopkins. It wasn't my favorite book that she wrote, but I still liked reading it. I didn't do a review on this book, but I gave it 4/5 stars on goodreads.

I also enjoyed reading Venomous by Christopher Krovatin. It was a fun and quick read but it has a lot of deep and mature content in it. It was different from any kind of book that I've read before. You can read my review on this book here.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was my favorite book that I read this month. John Green is a phenomenal writer and this book definitely did not disappoint me. I did a review on this book as well, and I will leave the link to it here.

I'm currently reading The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead, which is the second book in the Bloodlines series. So far I'm enjoying it, but I don't remember all of what happened in Bloodlines so it's a little hard for me to get into. After this book I'm going to be reading The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling. I am so so so excited for this book and I can't wait to read it. It was a pleasant surprise that J.K wrote another book!

Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed my (small) September wrap up!