#melissa de la cruz

Genre:Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary:

Schuyler Van Alen is starting to get more comfortable with her newfound vampire powers, but she still has many unanswered questions. A trip to Italy in search of her grandfather only serves to make things more confusing. What secrets are the leaders of The Committee hiding? Meanwhile, back in New York, preparations are feverishly underway for the famous Four Hundred Ball. In true Blue Blood fashion, the ball is totally fab, complete with masks and hidden behind this masquerade is a revelation that will change the course of a young vampire’s destiny.

The thrilling sequel in Melissa de la Cruz’s vampire mythology has all the glamour, attitude, and vampire lore that made the first book a hit.

*Opinions*

The second novel in the Blue Blood series is a marked improvement over the first, though it won’t be added to my favorites. This book picks up not too long after the first, with Schuyler attempting to track down her grandfather who has been hiding in Venice for centuries while learning to master her new powers as well. Schuyler is not the only young vampire coming into her powers, but while Mimi and Jack Force are remembering their many centuries as a bonded pair, Bliss is attempting to find a way to master the nightmares that plague her. While everyone attempts to focus on the Four Hundred Ball, there is still a killer in their midsts, even if the Conclave doesn’t want to see it. 

The writing in this novel was a marked improvement over the first, dropping the constant references to expensive clothing brands, cars, and restaurants. There is also a marked plotline for Schuyler and Mimi, even if they don’t feel very fleshed out, but Bliss still seems to be used for a plot device and not much else. One big improvement is cutting the number of perspectives down to just the girl, Schuyler, Bliss, and Mimi. That being said I have no connection to any of these characters and the author forcing suspense by doing a flashback to conversations that could have been explained in a couple of sentences was annoying. Also, the constant rhetorical questions, but those are pretty common in young adult books. For all its faults, this book was compulsively readable and I finished it in two days.

While we cut down the number of characters, the only one that was given any bit of emotional depth is Mimi Force. While she is still the main social antagonist for Schuyler and a privileged brat most of the novel, we get to see that she is scared of change and losing the one person she had been attached to her for centuries. There is a peek behind the mask and while she is not likable, especially because she is ready to do very dangerous things and seriously hurt people, at least you felt something for her. I could not care less about Bliss, Schuyler, Jack, or their relationships. Honestly, I was more into Lawrence and Charles’s battles than what was going on with the main characters.  

I’m going to continue the series because I am committed at this point, the last book has been sitting on my “to read” list for almost a decade. I am nothing if not stubborn.

Genre:Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Fiction

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Summary:

When the Mayflower set sail in 1620, it carried on board the men and women who would shape America: Miles Standish; John Alden; Constance Hopkins. But some among the Pilgrims were not pure of heart; they were not escaping religious persecution. Indeed, they were not even human. They were vampires.
The vampires assimilated quickly into the New World. Rising to levels of enormous power, wealth, and influence, they were the celebrated blue bloods of American society.

The Blue Bloods vowed that their immortal status would remain a closely guarded secret. And they kept that secret for centuries. But now, in New York City, the secret is seeping out. Schuyler Van Alen is a sophomore at a prestigious private school. She prefers baggy, vintage clothes instead of the Prada and pearls worn by her classmates, and she lives with her reclusive grandmother in a dilapated mansion. Schuyler is a loner…and happy that way. Suddenly, when she turns fifteen, there is a visible mosaic of blue veins on her arm. She starts to crave raw food and she is having flashbacks to ancient times. Then a popular girl from her school is found dead… drained of all her blood. Schuyler doesn’t know what to think, but she wants to find out the secrets the Blue Bloods are keeping. But is she herself in danger?

*Opinions*

As this is my second time reading this book, I reread my first review to see how my opinion had changed. Apparently, time has made me a much meaner wiser reviewer, and saw this novel in a less favorable light. I think the bones of the novel are interesting, that the wealthy elite of New York gained that power because they are supernatural, being reincarnated over and over again to guide humanity in an attempt to end the curse that made them vampires in the first place. The addition of the mystery of the Roanoke Colony and the word Croatoan left there was also an extremely interesting take on history. However, that is kind of where the positives ended as this novel felt more like an outline than a realized novel.

Normally I enjoy multiple points of view in a novel, but I believe it was a determent in this case. Not only did moving between four viewpoints make it hard to connect with any of them, but the viewpoint shift for a paragraph or two was jarring. Schuyler, who is supposed to be our protagonist, doesn’t really have much of a personality aside from being an outsider of the ‘in-crowd’. Schuyler was never given a personality because we weren’t with her long enough to get a better sense of who she was other than she thought Jack Force was hot and Oliver Hazard-Perry was her best friend. All of the main characters were just tropes, a brooding hero, bitchy popular girl, a jovial best friend who secretly loves the main character, and a new girl trying to fit in. The only character given a bit of depth was Bliss and even though it was a puddle, not an ocean. Without this emotional connection to the characters, I really wasn’t invested in what happened to them or worried about their safety.

I would like to know what the early 2000s obsession with incestual storylines was exactly. While I only got through The Mortal Instrument fiasco because it came out in the end that biologically related individuals were not together, that doesn’t seem to be the case in this series. While they tried to explain it away by the whole “when the Blue Blood takes over the human blood no longer matters” it still has a good deal of ick to it. When you have these fifteen and sixteen-year-olds drinking, smoking, and having sex then having a jealous possessiveness of a twin for another twin is not something I enjoy. Especially when everyone else notices how close they are. I am glad that this has faded out of young adult literature and it does not need to come back. 

The plot itself is flimsy, vampires being drained of blood so they couldn’t be reincarnated again, and never living up to the promise of the concept that vampires came from fallen angels. Also, all the name-dropping of brands did nothing but annoy me and break up the story. There is a way to convey the wealth of the characters without talking about brands that either date the novel or mean nothing to the reader. I will say that it is a fast read and the original concept was interesting, but past that I don’t have a lot of nice things to say. However, I am going to continue with the series because I have read every book except the last one and I am a completionist.