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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
I hated this book, I didn't identify with the characters and I found the plot boring. I didn't like the writing style, either. This book was, simply, not for me! I can sort of see why others enjoyed it, only because I read it after it was recommended to me.
medium-paced
06/21/2020 – blue bloods was my ya of choice in the era where twilight and the mortal instruments reigned, which definitely does not mean i liked it more than the darkest powers (because i most certainly liked it less). heck, i liked it even less than hunger games, but this was simply more enjoyable in that it was clearly way more self-indulgent and didn't involve as many teenaged revolutionaries. in short, No Thinking Needed. moreover, the setup and premise seemed to me miles more interesting than the worldbuilding twilight or tmi could offer, even though i can't say i was particularly connected to even a single one of the characters. i remember this series much more fondly than i do the other series of the era, though that probably doesn't say much, since i don't consider my taste in ya to have peaked until i was no longer a young adult. 3.5 stars pertains to how much entertainment it gave me when i was younger, given how many times i reread the series. probably dozens of times pre-2010.
This was so appallingly bad I wish there was a way for me to give it less than 1 star, but whatever:
1. I do not live in NYC, but I do not feel I have to live in NYC to know that Melissa de la Cruz is absolutely, 100% full of shit if she wants me to believe that NYC is as milky white as it is portrayed in this piece of garbage the world is forcing me to call a 'book.'
2. No, but not I wish I was exaggerating; there is not a single person of color in this ENTIRE book. In New York! People of color just somehow DON'T exist! In New fucking YORK!
3. I guess only white people can be rich and socially prominent????
4. ?????????
5. NO ONE IN THIS BOOK MAKES SENSE.
6. Characters are just CONVENIENTLY THERE, serving as narrators and DOING NOTHING to speed along the plot. NOTHING! And the fact that they do nothing makes complete sense because these are not characters but just mouthpieces to further Melissa's BULLSHIT agenda.
7. Jesus fucking Christ, Melissa, you make Cassandra Clare Pulitzer worthy. You make J. K. Rowling look like her world building makes sense, like her plot holes don't exist, like her #white feminist and #not like other girls agenda aren't persistent issues in her books.
8. I genuinely think the person who edited this book, along with the publisher, hates Melissa because there is no way anyone who cares about this sad excuse of a BOOK and AUTHOR would have ALLOWED this nonsense to be published like this.
9. Why did no one tell Melissa that changing point of views at RANDOM in the middle of CHAPTERS without even making a NEW PARAGRAPH was not a good idea? This is especially jarring when every single character sounds the same, because everyone in this book is just a three or four personality traits poorly sealed together with pretentious as fuck name.
10. Augusta Carondolet. Oliver Hazard Perry. Schuyler van Alen. These are ACTUAL names! In the book!
11. WHY.
12. W H Y.
13. I was gonna keep on going but I'm already tired and honestly, what the fuck. What the FUCK, WHY WAS THIS PUBLISHED.
14. Actually, I'm a little sad that this concept of vampires was wasted on Melissa, her editor and her publishing company, because it's actually really cool. VAMPIRES are actually fallen angels? Expelled from Heaven? Michael and Gabriel willingly fell to guide them to Paradise once they've completed their penance on Earth? Sign me the fuck up.
15. As long as Melissa isn't writing it! Which, unfortunately, she is.
16. Also, I can't finalize this without saying that as usual, everyone is str8 4ever and ever, I guess. Gay people, just like people of color, do not exist in this book.
1. I do not live in NYC, but I do not feel I have to live in NYC to know that Melissa de la Cruz is absolutely, 100% full of shit if she wants me to believe that NYC is as milky white as it is portrayed in this piece of garbage the world is forcing me to call a 'book.'
2. No, but not I wish I was exaggerating; there is not a single person of color in this ENTIRE book. In New York! People of color just somehow DON'T exist! In New fucking YORK!
3. I guess only white people can be rich and socially prominent????
4. ?????????
5. NO ONE IN THIS BOOK MAKES SENSE.
6. Characters are just CONVENIENTLY THERE, serving as narrators and DOING NOTHING to speed along the plot. NOTHING! And the fact that they do nothing makes complete sense because these are not characters but just mouthpieces to further Melissa's BULLSHIT agenda.
7. Jesus fucking Christ, Melissa, you make Cassandra Clare Pulitzer worthy. You make J. K. Rowling look like her world building makes sense, like her plot holes don't exist, like her #white feminist and #not like other girls agenda aren't persistent issues in her books.
8. I genuinely think the person who edited this book, along with the publisher, hates Melissa because there is no way anyone who cares about this sad excuse of a BOOK and AUTHOR would have ALLOWED this nonsense to be published like this.
9. Why did no one tell Melissa that changing point of views at RANDOM in the middle of CHAPTERS without even making a NEW PARAGRAPH was not a good idea? This is especially jarring when every single character sounds the same, because everyone in this book is just a three or four personality traits poorly sealed together with pretentious as fuck name.
10. Augusta Carondolet. Oliver Hazard Perry. Schuyler van Alen. These are ACTUAL names! In the book!
11. WHY.
12. W H Y.
13. I was gonna keep on going but I'm already tired and honestly, what the fuck. What the FUCK, WHY WAS THIS PUBLISHED.
14. Actually, I'm a little sad that this concept of vampires was wasted on Melissa, her editor and her publishing company, because it's actually really cool. VAMPIRES are actually fallen angels? Expelled from Heaven? Michael and Gabriel willingly fell to guide them to Paradise once they've completed their penance on Earth? Sign me the fuck up.
15. As long as Melissa isn't writing it! Which, unfortunately, she is.
16. Also, I can't finalize this without saying that as usual, everyone is str8 4ever and ever, I guess. Gay people, just like people of color, do not exist in this book.
The only way to describe this book is to say it's like The Covenant mashed with Gossip Girl and a splash of Cruel Intentions. And it's not a good mix.
First of all the amount of implied twincest is...well kind of gross. I know the comparison is with the Pharaohs but it's still just see for me and a serious put off. And the other romance I'm general is just kinda ehh.
The only interesting thing was the whole Croatan thing and that's what kept me reading. That whole lore was new and fascinating but...not enough to make me want to read more. It just really wasn't great.
First of all the amount of implied twincest is...well kind of gross. I know the comparison is with the Pharaohs but it's still just see for me and a serious put off. And the other romance I'm general is just kinda ehh.
The only interesting thing was the whole Croatan thing and that's what kept me reading. That whole lore was new and fascinating but...not enough to make me want to read more. It just really wasn't great.
The Mythology:-
It's different than the usual vampire-lore used in every other YA vampire novel.Something interesting.And that is one of the reasons why I will probably read the sequels.To see how the author develops this Gossip Girls meets Vampires story of rich and affluent vampires who are actually fallen angels ,all in the backdrop of high school .
The Name dropping:-
Paragraphs have been devoted to describe what the characters are wearing in tedious details.A little mention here and there doesn't bother me but lines like
Schuyler fretted, shivering in her long black cardigan with holes in each elbow. She'd found the sweater in a Manhattan Valley thrift store last week. It smelled like decay and stale rosewater perfume, and her skinny frame was lost in its voluminous folds. Schuyler always looked like she was drowning in fabric. The black sweater reached almost to her calves, and underneath she wore a sheer black T-shirt over a worn gray thermal undershirt; and under that, a long peasant skirt that swept the floor. Like a nineteenth century street urchin, her skirt hems were black with dirt from dragging on the sidewalks. She was wearing her favorite pair of black-and-white Jack Purcell sneakers, the ones with the duct-taped hole on the right toe. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back with a beaded scarf she'd found in her grandmother's closet.
this in every chapter really irritated me.I am not very fashion-conscious,I know what i like or what looks good and what looks atrocious but I don't care or give a darn whether the bag is Prada or Chanel or Gucci.Even the buildings and food etc. are depicted in detail.
The Prose:-
The writing is bad.Period.
The book is written in third person and the author could have devoted a few lines about the developments and what the characters felt and how it changed things instead of droning about the fashion labels.Every major reveal is taken in the stride by the characters in a sentence or two.Everything is rushed through and the important moments in the plot are glossed over.There is dialogue and a sentence or two that explains what the person thinks about the information revealed and then the chapter ends.
Schuyler finds she is a vampire.At first she does not believe and then Jack makes her extract her fangs,from the back of the mouth,weird i know.And then a minute later she is fine and ready to embrace her destiny.I don't want chapters devoted to descriptions of feelings of a teenage girl but some insight about character's motivations for their actions would have been nice.
The Characters:-
All the characters are superficial and caricatures.
Schuyler (What's with the weird names,Bliss, Perfection?) is a bland herione.She is perfect and beautiful.All of them,Jack,Mimi,Bliss,Oliver are undeveloped and standard YA characters.
I will read the next book but whether i finish the series or not depends on the writing.I hope it gets better.
It's different than the usual vampire-lore used in every other YA vampire novel.Something interesting.And that is one of the reasons why I will probably read the sequels.To see how the author develops this Gossip Girls meets Vampires story of rich and affluent vampires who are actually fallen angels ,all in the backdrop of high school .
The Name dropping:-
Paragraphs have been devoted to describe what the characters are wearing in tedious details.A little mention here and there doesn't bother me but lines like
Schuyler fretted, shivering in her long black cardigan with holes in each elbow. She'd found the sweater in a Manhattan Valley thrift store last week. It smelled like decay and stale rosewater perfume, and her skinny frame was lost in its voluminous folds. Schuyler always looked like she was drowning in fabric. The black sweater reached almost to her calves, and underneath she wore a sheer black T-shirt over a worn gray thermal undershirt; and under that, a long peasant skirt that swept the floor. Like a nineteenth century street urchin, her skirt hems were black with dirt from dragging on the sidewalks. She was wearing her favorite pair of black-and-white Jack Purcell sneakers, the ones with the duct-taped hole on the right toe. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back with a beaded scarf she'd found in her grandmother's closet.
this in every chapter really irritated me.I am not very fashion-conscious,I know what i like or what looks good and what looks atrocious but I don't care or give a darn whether the bag is Prada or Chanel or Gucci.Even the buildings and food etc. are depicted in detail.
The Prose:-
The writing is bad.Period.
The book is written in third person and the author could have devoted a few lines about the developments and what the characters felt and how it changed things instead of droning about the fashion labels.Every major reveal is taken in the stride by the characters in a sentence or two.Everything is rushed through and the important moments in the plot are glossed over.There is dialogue and a sentence or two that explains what the person thinks about the information revealed and then the chapter ends.
Schuyler finds she is a vampire.At first she does not believe and then Jack makes her extract her fangs,from the back of the mouth,weird i know.And then a minute later she is fine and ready to embrace her destiny.I don't want chapters devoted to descriptions of feelings of a teenage girl but some insight about character's motivations for their actions would have been nice.
The Characters:-
All the characters are superficial and caricatures.
Schuyler (What's with the weird names,Bliss, Perfection?) is a bland herione.She is perfect and beautiful.All of them,Jack,Mimi,Bliss,Oliver are undeveloped and standard YA characters.
I will read the next book but whether i finish the series or not depends on the writing.I hope it gets better.
Picked this up in an op-shop because I have such a weakness for any trashy YA franchise set among New York's wealthy elite. You know, people whose surnames have 'van' in them. This one was especially trashy because they're all… vampires?
It took a while for the nutty cosmology to make sense to me, and really it was a bit of a bummer. Imagine being one of only 400 people like you, and you have to hang out with the same 400 people throughout eternity, except they have different 'shells' that conveniently last the length of a human lifetime, which I think is somehow like Doctor Who having a regeneration or something. As I type this I am still uncertain of whether vampires reproduce sexually or whether it's some IVF (in-vampire fertilisation) dealio, and whose genes actually get passed down? Does the same body regenerate for generations, like a cutting from an old tree?
So many questions. Oh dear, it's best not to think too hard about it. Look, they are vampires and also the upper crust of NYC. They are all very thin and beautiful even though they hit the booze and put away mountains of food. They run all New York's cultural institutions. Their blood is literally blue! It is like the fronds of Eywa's sacred trees, containing accumulated centuries of wisdom.
The heroine, Schuyler, is of course extremely beautiful, but edgy with it, and from an old wealthy family, but now impoverished and wears shapeless grunge-style op-shop clothes and is therefore more substantial than her brand name-dropping mean-girl classmates. I deduced on page 11 that her male BFF is obviously in love with her, but she is jonesing for the absurdly named Jack Force, the prince of their prep school.
It's written in a lively but not very subtle style that was perfect for devouring while on holiday. I enjoyed the author's chutzpah for just baldly ending the book on a massive cliffhanger. I am pleased to learn there are like half a dozen more of these that I could devour similarly, much as the Blue Bloods bestow the Sacred Kiss upon their Red Blood familiars – that is, when they are not being devoured by the Silver Bloods.
I also wish I could switch off my proofreader's brain but it bothered me to see some dangling modifiers and some typos in here.
It took a while for the nutty cosmology to make sense to me, and really it was a bit of a bummer. Imagine being one of only 400 people like you, and you have to hang out with the same 400 people throughout eternity, except they have different 'shells' that conveniently last the length of a human lifetime, which I think is somehow like Doctor Who having a regeneration or something. As I type this I am still uncertain of whether vampires reproduce sexually or whether it's some IVF (in-vampire fertilisation) dealio, and whose genes actually get passed down? Does the same body regenerate for generations, like a cutting from an old tree?
So many questions. Oh dear, it's best not to think too hard about it. Look, they are vampires and also the upper crust of NYC. They are all very thin and beautiful even though they hit the booze and put away mountains of food. They run all New York's cultural institutions. Their blood is literally blue! It is like the fronds of Eywa's sacred trees, containing accumulated centuries of wisdom.
The heroine, Schuyler, is of course extremely beautiful, but edgy with it, and from an old wealthy family, but now impoverished and wears shapeless grunge-style op-shop clothes and is therefore more substantial than her brand name-dropping mean-girl classmates. I deduced on page 11 that her male BFF is obviously in love with her, but she is jonesing for the absurdly named Jack Force, the prince of their prep school.
It's written in a lively but not very subtle style that was perfect for devouring while on holiday. I enjoyed the author's chutzpah for just baldly ending the book on a massive cliffhanger. I am pleased to learn there are like half a dozen more of these that I could devour similarly, much as the Blue Bloods bestow the Sacred Kiss upon their Red Blood familiars – that is, when they are not being devoured by the Silver Bloods.
I also wish I could switch off my proofreader's brain but it bothered me to see some dangling modifiers and some typos in here.
I surprised myself by loving this book.
I find that the summary on the back of the book is a little misleading - Blue Bloods follows not only the story of Schuyler Van Allen, but also the stories of Bliss Llewellyn and Madeline Force ("Mimi"). There are enough cliches to make it familiar, but few enough so that the pieces of originality stood out well. At the beginning, I was afraid that De La Cruz was going to dive into intense descriptions of clothes (hey-lo upper class, teenage NYC!), but she only did so when was appropriate, and in the voice of the one character who would actually care about something like that - Mimi. There isn't a single mention of a name-brand that Schuyler is wearing (excepting, of course, her modelling campaign, but her discomfort is clear the whole time).
The summary on the back of the book implies that this is a paranormal mystery, but the story itself seems to be more coming-of-age... except it's not about growing up... it's about becoming a vampire.
There were enough unique aspects in this book to make it feel fresh in a world that is torn between sparkly emo vampires (Meyer), and vicious, cunning vampires (Rice). She uses enough of the traditional aspects to remain true to the folklore, but explains away everything that doesn't fit. Even if she doesn't use aspects like garlic, etc., then I appreciate the fact she finds a justification for not using them. New aspects, such as the flashbacks and reincarnation? That's just cool.
However, there are points that are a little cheesy - Gabriel and Michael, for starters. Also, Oliver felt too flat after revealing his secret, as though knowing that sucked his character dry for me, and that was a little disappointing.
This book is great for people who want to read a light vampire flick, who aren't forcefully invented in "vampire" as the word is defined by another author, and as always with YA... people who can dissociate themselves from an adult mindset and recognize that the main characters may have souls as old as time, but their bodies and maturity level aren't quite as old.
I will be picking up the next book in this series, and I hope it delivers.
((Cross-posted on my blog: The Literary Phoenix))
I find that the summary on the back of the book is a little misleading - Blue Bloods follows not only the story of Schuyler Van Allen, but also the stories of Bliss Llewellyn and Madeline Force ("Mimi"). There are enough cliches to make it familiar, but few enough so that the pieces of originality stood out well. At the beginning, I was afraid that De La Cruz was going to dive into intense descriptions of clothes (hey-lo upper class, teenage NYC!), but she only did so when was appropriate, and in the voice of the one character who would actually care about something like that - Mimi. There isn't a single mention of a name-brand that Schuyler is wearing (excepting, of course, her modelling campaign, but her discomfort is clear the whole time).
The summary on the back of the book implies that this is a paranormal mystery, but the story itself seems to be more coming-of-age... except it's not about growing up... it's about becoming a vampire.
There were enough unique aspects in this book to make it feel fresh in a world that is torn between sparkly emo vampires (Meyer), and vicious, cunning vampires (Rice). She uses enough of the traditional aspects to remain true to the folklore, but explains away everything that doesn't fit. Even if she doesn't use aspects like garlic, etc., then I appreciate the fact she finds a justification for not using them. New aspects, such as the flashbacks and reincarnation? That's just cool.
However, there are points that are a little cheesy - Gabriel and Michael, for starters. Also, Oliver felt too flat after revealing his secret, as though knowing that sucked his character dry for me, and that was a little disappointing.
This book is great for people who want to read a light vampire flick, who aren't forcefully invented in "vampire" as the word is defined by another author, and as always with YA... people who can dissociate themselves from an adult mindset and recognize that the main characters may have souls as old as time, but their bodies and maturity level aren't quite as old.
I will be picking up the next book in this series, and I hope it delivers.
((Cross-posted on my blog: The Literary Phoenix))