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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
Eh. I didn't dislike The Golden Lily, but I definitely felt as though it was lacking something. The plot was so-so, most of the characters were grating on my nerves (and what I love most about Mead's books are the characters), and... I don't know. I guess I just wasn't feeling it.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Okay, looking back at my review from book 1 and now finishing book 2 I can't say I want to give the books more stars at this point.
The storyline isn't exciting enough for me throughout most of book 2 and the development of a lot of characters is still going so slow(for me).
There are still certain things that are predictable I think.But not everything is 'bad'.
I really Like Sydney more and more, she's finally getting a real personality and speaking up more. Adrian is funny and I think there aren't enough Adrien/Sydney moments :(
I do like Sydney's character development so far and am really curious to see what the rest of the story has waiting for this her.
She's really becoming a interesting character.
Further in the book there are some new developments story wise and character wise
which made me more and more curious for more.
This book has grown on me a little more then the first one did and despite the fact that I had trouble to get Into the story
I'm looking forward to see what will happen in book 3 :)
The storyline isn't exciting enough for me throughout most of book 2 and the development of a lot of characters is still going so slow(for me).
There are still certain things that are predictable I think.But not everything is 'bad'.
I really Like Sydney more and more, she's finally getting a real personality and speaking up more. Adrian is funny and I think there aren't enough Adrien/Sydney moments :(
I do like Sydney's character development so far and am really curious to see what the rest of the story has waiting for this her.
She's really becoming a interesting character.
Further in the book there are some new developments story wise and character wise
which made me more and more curious for more.
This book has grown on me a little more then the first one did and despite the fact that I had trouble to get Into the story
I'm looking forward to see what will happen in book 3 :)
Wow. I never thought I would love The Golden Lily as much as Bloodlines, but I think I do! I, along with all the other fans of VA and Bloodlines, have desperately been awaiting The Golden Lily's release but now it's come and I have completely flown through reading it, I am sad that now I have to wait for the next book! Not that the end is a killer hanger, but it definitely left me wanting more.
This time around, things are getting more strained for Sydney. She is still posing as a student at Amberwood, along with Jill, Eddie and Angeline. She starts dating Brayden, the male version of herself, but the relationship is lacking spark. I think all of us fans know why! She begins questioning her relationships with the Moroi and Dhampirs she is working with, and her Alchemy code.
Sydney is back better than ever in this book, although, she annoyed me a lot more in this book. I don't know whether I just never noticed in Bloodlines, or if it was more prominent in this book, but her 'over-achiever, blurring the lines between right and wrong' just rubbed me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, I love Sydney. She is fierce, courageous with an attitude to boot, but this time around I loved her slightly less.
Adrian, however, I loved even more. I thought that was impossible, but after seeing so much more of his softer side, it really did make me weak at the knee's, swooning every other chapter.
All our other fantastic characters are back, including Dimitri, who plays a fairly large role in this one and I loved seeing him back in action! Plus, there is Brayden, Sydney's love interest.
There is a big new threat coming our characters way, one that they handle with their usual strength and force. But the end. WHY-OH-WHY?! You'll know what I mean once you read it. If you haven't bought yourself a copy yet, I suggest you go go go, because soon everyone will have read it and I guarantee, they will be talking!
This time around, things are getting more strained for Sydney. She is still posing as a student at Amberwood, along with Jill, Eddie and Angeline. She starts dating Brayden, the male version of herself, but the relationship is lacking spark. I think all of us fans know why! She begins questioning her relationships with the Moroi and Dhampirs she is working with, and her Alchemy code.
Sydney is back better than ever in this book, although, she annoyed me a lot more in this book. I don't know whether I just never noticed in Bloodlines, or if it was more prominent in this book, but her 'over-achiever, blurring the lines between right and wrong' just rubbed me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, I love Sydney. She is fierce, courageous with an attitude to boot, but this time around I loved her slightly less.
Adrian, however, I loved even more. I thought that was impossible, but after seeing so much more of his softer side, it really did make me weak at the knee's, swooning every other chapter.
All our other fantastic characters are back, including Dimitri, who plays a fairly large role in this one and I loved seeing him back in action! Plus, there is Brayden, Sydney's love interest.
There is a big new threat coming our characters way, one that they handle with their usual strength and force. But the end. WHY-OH-WHY?! You'll know what I mean once you read it. If you haven't bought yourself a copy yet, I suggest you go go go, because soon everyone will have read it and I guarantee, they will be talking!
Warning: If you haven't read all of the Vampire Academy books, then this could contain spoilers for those.
In Bloodlines we were taken into the point of view of Sydney, who in Vampire Academy plays a small role, but who is part of the same dynamic world -- only in a very different area of it, seeing as she's an Alchemist who has had it engrained into her from birth that all vampires are evil. Sure, Alchemist's will work with them on occasion, but it's all business and only business -- anything else would be treason. Sydney has been assigned to help assist in keeping Jill Mastrano (Dragomir) from the public eye because her very existence could disrupt the entire Moroi world as a whole.
Since Bloodlines, Sydney has come a long way in her feelings towards vampires, and in The Golden Lily she finds herself seeing friends in the Moroi and Dhampire associates she's been assigned to work with -- especially Adrian. These feelings and her wish to push them down lead her to dating a human guy who, for all intents and purposes, should be absolutely perfect for her in every way. But the more time she spends with him, the more she realizes that normal sometimes means boring and the friends she's found in the group she's come to know in Palm Springs are not something she'll find around every corner.
I enjoyed The Golden Lily, especially the developing relationship between Sydney and Adrian. I wouldn't have really put them together given the type of people they are -- complete opposites really -- but as this series continues I can understand why they would be great together and why Adrian especially needs Sydney in order to pull his life back together.
However, despite enjoying it, I didn't get quite as sucked into it as with Bloodlines. While the side story with the human boyfriend was important for growing Sydney's character, these scenes were kind of boring as well. A lot of the story seemed to go a bit slow until the last seventy pages or so of the book when the action and plot picked up a great deal. Not to my surprise, Mead ended this one with a bit of a cliff hanger in some respects, but it will be exciting to see where that goes in the next book.
I'm still enjoying Sydney's point of view for the most part and I like that she grew a lot in this book and stepped outside of many of her prejudices towards vampires and magic. She's slowly progressing, but I hope that soon she'll 100% see how warped of a view she's grown up with and understand that the Alchemists might not be right about everything in this situation.
Overall, I'm still enjoying the series, but this book wasn't as good as the first one. It did seem to do a lot of setup for what I think the next book will be about though, so hopefully the action and excitement -- and maybe even romance :) -- will pick up in that book a bit more. I'm definitely loving that Adrian is getting some time for healing and that Sydney is playing a big role in that. I would love to see this series start to head towards a larger endgame like Vampire Academy did because I think that would help tremendously with the pace of the books and given them a direction to head in. But even so, Mead is a wonderful writer and as usual I enjoy reading pretty much anything she writes.
In Bloodlines we were taken into the point of view of Sydney, who in Vampire Academy plays a small role, but who is part of the same dynamic world -- only in a very different area of it, seeing as she's an Alchemist who has had it engrained into her from birth that all vampires are evil. Sure, Alchemist's will work with them on occasion, but it's all business and only business -- anything else would be treason. Sydney has been assigned to help assist in keeping Jill Mastrano (Dragomir) from the public eye because her very existence could disrupt the entire Moroi world as a whole.
Since Bloodlines, Sydney has come a long way in her feelings towards vampires, and in The Golden Lily she finds herself seeing friends in the Moroi and Dhampire associates she's been assigned to work with -- especially Adrian. These feelings and her wish to push them down lead her to dating a human guy who, for all intents and purposes, should be absolutely perfect for her in every way. But the more time she spends with him, the more she realizes that normal sometimes means boring and the friends she's found in the group she's come to know in Palm Springs are not something she'll find around every corner.
I enjoyed The Golden Lily, especially the developing relationship between Sydney and Adrian. I wouldn't have really put them together given the type of people they are -- complete opposites really -- but as this series continues I can understand why they would be great together and why Adrian especially needs Sydney in order to pull his life back together.
However, despite enjoying it, I didn't get quite as sucked into it as with Bloodlines. While the side story with the human boyfriend was important for growing Sydney's character, these scenes were kind of boring as well. A lot of the story seemed to go a bit slow until the last seventy pages or so of the book when the action and plot picked up a great deal. Not to my surprise, Mead ended this one with a bit of a cliff hanger in some respects, but it will be exciting to see where that goes in the next book.
I'm still enjoying Sydney's point of view for the most part and I like that she grew a lot in this book and stepped outside of many of her prejudices towards vampires and magic. She's slowly progressing, but I hope that soon she'll 100% see how warped of a view she's grown up with and understand that the Alchemists might not be right about everything in this situation.
Overall, I'm still enjoying the series, but this book wasn't as good as the first one. It did seem to do a lot of setup for what I think the next book will be about though, so hopefully the action and excitement -- and maybe even romance :) -- will pick up in that book a bit more. I'm definitely loving that Adrian is getting some time for healing and that Sydney is playing a big role in that. I would love to see this series start to head towards a larger endgame like Vampire Academy did because I think that would help tremendously with the pace of the books and given them a direction to head in. But even so, Mead is a wonderful writer and as usual I enjoy reading pretty much anything she writes.
Omg that last scene! I waited sooooo long for Adrian to confess his fucking obvious feeling and then damn who would have thought otherwise? Sydneys the problem. I'm going to write a complete review afrer the whole series so yeah. I really liked this one tho. It's not really exiting but I still always wonder why it is so easy for me to read Richelle Meads books. It's like vacation, to realax and have a great reding experience.
It absolutely saddens me that I have to put this book down. I loved the Original Series (Vampire Academy Series). I was hoping the spin-off would be just as good. I found a lot of flaws though. I hated the fact that it took forever to get to the real "meat" of the story. The first half of the book was incredibly boring and seemed to be jumping around a lot. This review also includes the first book of the spin-off, "Bloodlines." So.. yeah... boring, boring, boring, yay awesome stuff! Ugh...
A little less high school drama than Bloodlines and a lot more... well, not much else. I honestly wasn't sure what the overarching plot of this book was until the final quarter, and I still feel as though my beloved VA characters have been done dirty.
> VA-Sydney had so much potential, but BL-Sydney is letting me down. Her intelligence is overshadowed by her social ineptitude and it's not quirky, it just makes her an unbelievable protagonist.
> Jill is still annoying, but maybe that's a 15yo thing.
> Eddie is still wasted in such a minor role and I'm offended that he's been reduced to nothing but Jill's secret admirer. Also, he's about to be stuck in another love-triangle? Come on! Give me fighter Eddie, give me Eddie bantering with the boys, give me Eddie dealing with the trauma of Mason's death!! Don't give me this mopey, stuck-in-the-middle crap.
> Dimitri is also wasted here. I was so keen at the end of Bloodlines to see more of Dimka but alas, we see Sydney hyper-describing that he's so handsome and not much else. Where was my Adrian/Dimitri fall-out and/or reconciliation? Where was Dimitri being a badass? Where was Dimitri swooning over his Roza?
> Adrian improved marginally in this book. He's still not VA-Adrian (VAdrian?), but he wasn't as mopey and self-absorbed as he was in Bloodlines. I feel as though him moving on from Rose and onto Sydney has not been fleshed out very well, but I suppose the books being written from Sydney's perspective is a natural hinderance there.
Also, and maybe this is a nit-pick, but I feel as though the Sonya/Adrian/Dimitri/Eddie experiments were utter BS. I know this is a fantasy book with magic that is not supposed to resemble real life, but Mead's version of 'science experiments' are plain unimaginative and unconvincing. If you're going to give me science in lieu of action, which I could forgive seeing as Sydney is our protagonist, at least make it interesting.
But again, I will continue reading this series. While not much has happened yet, and I am completely uninvested in the drama, I need to know where this is going.
> VA-Sydney had so much potential, but BL-Sydney is letting me down. Her intelligence is overshadowed by her social ineptitude and it's not quirky, it just makes her an unbelievable protagonist.
> Jill is still annoying, but maybe that's a 15yo thing.
> Eddie is still wasted in such a minor role and I'm offended that he's been reduced to nothing but Jill's secret admirer. Also, he's about to be stuck in another love-triangle? Come on! Give me fighter Eddie, give me Eddie bantering with the boys, give me Eddie dealing with the trauma of Mason's death!! Don't give me this mopey, stuck-in-the-middle crap.
> Dimitri is also wasted here. I was so keen at the end of Bloodlines to see more of Dimka but alas, we see Sydney hyper-describing that he's so handsome and not much else. Where was my Adrian/Dimitri fall-out and/or reconciliation? Where was Dimitri being a badass? Where was Dimitri swooning over his Roza?
> Adrian improved marginally in this book. He's still not VA-Adrian (VAdrian?), but he wasn't as mopey and self-absorbed as he was in Bloodlines. I feel as though him moving on from Rose and onto Sydney has not been fleshed out very well, but I suppose the books being written from Sydney's perspective is a natural hinderance there.
Also, and maybe this is a nit-pick, but I feel as though the Sonya/Adrian/Dimitri/Eddie experiments were utter BS. I know this is a fantasy book with magic that is not supposed to resemble real life, but Mead's version of 'science experiments' are plain unimaginative and unconvincing. If you're going to give me science in lieu of action, which I could forgive seeing as Sydney is our protagonist, at least make it interesting.
But again, I will continue reading this series. While not much has happened yet, and I am completely uninvested in the drama, I need to know where this is going.
This series gave me chronic heart burn in the best way possible