Sunday 22 March 2015

The Golden Lily (Bloodlines 2) by Richelle Mead

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?


-- Goodreads.com description --


Warning this review might contain spoilers for the Vampire Academy series and Bloodlines (book 1)!

After reading Bloodlines by Richelle Mead, I immediately picked up The Golden Lily, the second book in the series. Once again, I liked this book, it wasn't mind blowing but it wasn't bad either. I hoped things would have picked up a little more than they did, however. But this was still a fun read! The characters in Palm Spings got a visit from some old friends: Sonya Karp and Dimitri Belikov. I found it very interesting to read about Dimitri in Sydney's point of view. She sees him differently than Rose does, obviously, which made it quite fun.

Besides that, the book also has a new mystery which I didn't think was all that exciting but still just fun to read about. However, some relationships between the characters made up for that. And wow, Brayden was such a boring character! Some parts of the book were annoyingly predictable, which is something I rarely appreciate in any books.

I gave The Golden Lily 3 out of 5 stars as well. It was nice and fun but not great. I am going to read the rest of the series though, in part because I heard amazing things about the third book and in part because I really like the characters and I am not ready to give up on them.

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