A review by heavenreads
The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead

4.0

this book was definitely better than the first book and there were less characters that were frustrating me. i would also give this a 4.5 star rating but until i’ve finished the entire series i’m keeping it at 4 stars, just because it doesn’t really lean towards 5 stars for me. i’d come to love sydney in the first book but in this one she was too oblivious and i don’t just mean in terms of romantic relationships but also the plot. i’d mentioned before when i was doing a reading update that she had so many obvious clues but she still couldn’t connect the dots even when they were practically slapping her across the face. not to be that person constantly comparing the original series to the spin-off, but rose was able to figure things out faster than sydney most of the time and she barely had all the clues when she did and i found it so frustrating because sydney is meant to be a really smart character (rose isn’t stupid but she can be impulsive but this book made me realise even more how much smarter she is than people give her credit). adrian i found funny the whole time with his whining about dimitri, but he was so much better in this book. the perfect angsty love interest who is clearly in love with the main character but doesn’t say anything until the end because they know the mc (in this case sydney) wouldn’t be ok with their relationship. this series is clearly setting up an intense slowburn romance between the two of them. i just hope sydney stops annoying me as much as she did in this book. i was disappointed at how little we saw jill, but with sonya’s wedding coming up, i hope we see her more again since i feel like they’d all go to sonya’s wedding (hopefully that means more dimitri and rose together this time instead of seeing them both when they’re not together)