REVIEW - Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Series: Vampire Academy Series

Book No.: 1

Rating: 3.5 / 5 (☼☼☼ ½)


Book Type: Own

Summary: (brought to you by GOODREADS!)
St. Vladimir's Academy isn't just any boarding school—it's a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They've been on the run, but now they're being dragged back to St. Vladimir's—the very place where they're most in danger...

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy's ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world's fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.


First Sentence: I felt her fear before I heard her screams. 

Review:
Oh my goodness! Brianna read a vampire book that she didn’t entirely hate! Yes, you are right. No. I actually didn’t hate this one. (: I actually quite enjoyed it!

Kirston had been begging me to read this because she had read all the books in less than a month (which is a very good thing for her considering she’s always busy), so why wouldn’t I read something that my best friend loved? I’m so glad I took her advice.

Mead takes the old Romanian vampire legend. You know? The dhampirs, the Moroi, and the Strigoi? You have the dhampirs being the half-human, half-Moroi hybrids that are the guardians of the Moroi, who are the royal, fragile vampires. You also have the big, looming, literally-dead bad guys, the Strigoi – the bloodthirsty, evil vampires. I’m so glad she took a myth and adapted it to the modern world rather than make up her own world. You can tell that the organization of the different creatures and rankings are neater than when an author would have invented their own world. She does have some originality in it, (St. Vladimir, etc.) 

but the whole thing is based around this ancient myth.

You have Rose, a very, very, very stubborn dhampir guarding her best friend, Lissa, who happens to be the last Dragmoir (I’m not sure I spelt that right. You can spam me correcting me. Sorry.) in the line. You can already tell that this story has some spice to it when you have a rare character. There has to be someone who wants her, and why yes, but I’m not telling you who. That would give away the plot. They have to return to St. Vladmir’s Academy, where they ran away from years ago, for some reason or another. They later find out some of the answers to their many questions: Why wasn’t Lissa mastering a known element? How did Rose survive the crash that killed Lissa’s parents and brother? And many more questions that hang you over to read the sequel, Frostbite.

The reason why I didn’t give this book a higher rating is that Rose is annoying, well, to me. She acts like she has no limits, but then I gave it a higher rating then I would have because she does have human emotions which hold her back sometimes.

If you want some awesome mythology (because that’s what it basically is) that doesn’t butcher the awesome name of vampires, then you’ll have to read this book. It’s on Brianna’s ‘Vampire Read List’. It’s hard to get on that list. Brianna likes her vampires a certain way, and she needs to stop talking in the third person.

Cover: C
What? It’s a girl. With a crimson hue. That’s about it. Nothing interesting. But it’s pretty. Me likes choppy sentences. 

REVIEW - If I Stay by Gayle Forman

If I Stay by Gayle Forman 

Series: Has a companion novel (I think. . . ) 

Book No.: 1

Rating: 5 / 5 (☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼)


Book Type: Own

Summary: (brought to you by the awesome folks of GoodReads!)

In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck...

A sophisticated, layered, and heartachingly beautiful story about the power of family and friends, the choices we all make—and the ultimate choice Mia commands. 


First Sentence: Everyone thinks it was because of the snow.

Review: 

I had heard GREAT things about this novel, and I needed to get away from the whole hardcore paranormal books, so I picked this book up at WalMart. I had high hopes coming into this book, and by the end of this novel, I was blown away! My expectations had been met and then some. 

I don't come across a lot of books that made me put the book down and think about my position in other's eyes, but having this do such a thing was so refreshing, and it gave me a new outlook on life that I still have. You can basically say that this influenced how I live today! Such a hard thing to find when reading Young Adult, right? 

I have never had a book that had me so engrossed that I read it in one sitting and had me thinking about it even months after I had finished it, but this had. It impressed me that a book in under three hundred pages could have me in tears, launch me into laughing fits, and make me realize that this is our only life. Live it like you mean it! Life's too short. 

Mia - she happens to be one of my favorite characters from any book I have ever read. She it about a spitting image of me personality wise: musician, loves the people around her, gifted, smart, etc. I have never encountered a character in any book I have read that was so much like me. I was pleased, and this only made me engrossed even more! You have to care about the characters you love in a book, right? AMEN!

All in all, such a beautiful story. The characters will linger in your mind even after you've put this book down. Such a rare thing to come across, but I'm so glad I did!

Cover: A

Yes. I'm biased. No. I still love it. 

REVIEW - Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Paranromalcy by Kiersten White


Series: Paranormalcy 


Book No.: 1


Rating: 4.5 / 5 (☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ 1/2)


Book Type: Library


Summary: (Brought to you by the kind folks of Goodreads)

Evie’s always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals’ glamours.

But Evie’s about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.

First Sentence: "Wait - did you- you just yawned!"

Review: 

He he. Ah ah! This book was so bleeping good. (If you have read the book, you will get this joke!) It has struck up some awesome reviews from Goodreads, fellow bloggers, and everywhere else in a bookie's cyberspace, so I decided to check it out. 

This book has the City of Bones type of thing going on: multiple types of supernatural beings running around the world, and the main character is appointed/born into (or something like that) a group that keeps these supernatural beings into order. I love those types of books, and I've just now recently discovered these types of books.

Evie. Ah. Let's start this. I loved her character. She was a character than you could relate to. She feared the things that I would have feared. She reacted to events the same way I would have. Therefore, she's not a bland, unlikable, blah character, but a rather interesting character that is human (well, in the emotion category, that's for sure (; ) 

Lend, the shape-shifter-whatever-he-was guy Evie falls for, is a very endearing character as well. I loved him. Period. The back story between his mother and father engaged me and made me love him even more, and the fact that someone like him would go to high school?! This makes me think twice about my classmates now. 

Other characters -- like Raquel, the faerie guy that I'd rather not name (grrr. . .), and others -- all had important roles in the story, and this shocked me. Usually, an author would just put a character in the book, and then they would never show up at all again. They had no real influence to the plot, but with this book, no character was a useless character. I wish the world worked that way. 


Avoiding cheesiness, I really, really, REALLY loved this story from cover to cover. If you want something that makes you cry, (because I almost in some parts of the book) and something that'll make you laugh just as hard, (because Evie is such a little rascal) then you should definitely have this book on your shelf! A highly recommended book! 


**NOTE**
Have I ever given a book 5 stars? ):


Cover: A-
The colors are so soft and beautiful! The painting/digital/whatever-the-heck-it-happens-to-be of the girl is stunning, and this was one of the many reasons that I picked up the book to begin with.