I hate to say this but I was very underwhelmed with this one.. I love vampire books always have a little blood has always made things more intriguing for me. I was hoping for so much but didn't get much. will give book two a try but don't have high hopes ( )

excited to start the next one :) ( )

excited to start the next one :) ( )

Since I already met my reading challenge I decided to read this again. I am so glad I did, I love this series and having not read it in a while I was a bit mixed up on the storyline after watching the show on Peacock, I wasn't thrilled on the changes they did on the show but towards the end it really grew on me and I was okay with the changes, too bad they cancelled it but fortunate for me I still have this series and can read it as many times as I like.
My favorite things about Vampire Academy book 1:
💗 Rose and Dimitri , Richelle does a slow but perfect connection for both of them
💗 Christian - the loner kid with more to him than people give him credit for
💗 the world building, not too much info dump, just enough to give you an idea

What I didn't like - the audible narrator of the 1st book, it was just not matching to the characters when I physically read the book.

Recommend if you like a book that goes from point A to point see in a decent time span, not rushed, great friendship and Vampire world.

5 stars for sure!!! ( )

***WARNING: The 2nd half of this review DOES contain SPOILERS *** I'd give this book a 2.5 stars. I liked the first few pages and how it started off, there was a lot of potential and the last 40 or so pages were really good but all the stuff in between annoyed me. As I was reading the book I kept thinking, "this is a vampire version of mean girls". There was so much high school teenage drama in it and it bugged me. There were some interesting parts here and there and mystery woven in that I liked and if it weren't for all the high school drama I probably would have liked it a lot more. I hear the series gets better as it goes on, especially after the 3rd book, I really hope so cause I don't know how much more I can take of "'OMG, she's such a slut, a total blood whore.' 'Like her parents aren't even royal, they're basically like custodians'" (ok, so they don't exactly talk like this in the book but this is what I kept picturing every time there was some sort of drama going on).



***SPOILERS AHEAD!!!***

Pros: I like the mystery involved and learning about a world where there are different classes of vampires. That was something new and interesting; they have the Moroi which are "living vampires" and they're good, the Strigoi which are the "dead vampires" and they're evil, and the dhampirs which are half vampire half human hybrids who protect the Moroi. I will say it's a bit confusing at first and I'm still not entirely sure how there's a such thing as "living" vampires but it's an interesting world system that was created. I also liked all the action scenes at the end and Natalie becoming a Strigoi is something I totally did not see coming.

Cons: Way too much teenage drama throughout the book. 90-95% of the book is teenage drama, it was like reading a vampire version of mean girls. I also didn't like that they explained so much about the world at one time. Instead of explaining dhampirs, and Moroi, and Strigoi and magic and who's evil/who's good all at once it would have been better if they spread that information throughout the whole book. The beginning before they were taken back to the school, when they were still on the run, it had so much potential to be great if they had just stayed running and didn't have to go back to the school. Lissa "uncle" still could have been after them and could have been chasing them and it would have been more interesting if they were also moving around, always looking over their shoulders to see if someone was coming. The story would have been better and there wouldn't be so much teenage drama crap. ( )