~*~Savory Selections

via Kids Menu~*~

A Young Adult Novel worth sinking your teeth into

Genre:  Paranormal

Heat Level:  A dash of spice.

So the other night I rented the movie Vampire Academy. I'll admit, I never picked up the book because, let's face it, there are a ton of vampire teen books out there and I sort of just got burnt out. Sad, but true. I'm one of those people who think, "Oh, God, not another Vampire YA..."

However, the trailer for the movie looked interested so I'm like, "I can spend a $1.25 at Redbox and give two hours of my life to it. Check it out."

Now the movie was good but not great. Having not read the book, I found a lot of things very confusing. Like who the hell that third girl who suddenly showed up was. It wasn't until the freaking end I figured out she was the old guy's daughter when she gives Rose a necklace.

But I liked it enough that I decided to pick up the book... which ended up being really good.

Yes, there are lots of books out there with teen girls in a magical school of some sort, a ton of books about vampires, and even quite a few books about teen vampires attending a magical school. What Richelle Mead does here is different.

She sets up the species, sets up her own mythology behind them - using a lot of ancient legends others don't touch, even sets up her own religion. 

The story was solid, a great introduction to her world. But I think what I like best is what she does with her characters.

In many YA's you have the girls who don't have sex, never use drugs, never drink, think everyone who does it is stupid, etc. We have that because, as a society, that's what we want our youth to be like. We want them to be perfect.

In this book we follow Rose Hathaway, a seventeen year old Dhampir, who is in training to be a bodyguard to her best friend, Lissa Dragomir, a Moroi princess. Most Dhampirs - half-humans, half Moroi hybrids - dedicate their lives to protecting the Moroi - vampire-like beings who are not immortal. This is because Moroi are the only beings Dhampirs can mate with. You also have the Strigoi, who are the evil undead immortal vampires that we are more familiar with.

What I love about this is Rose, before she ran away from the Acadmey, use to be a real party girl. She use to drink, smoke weed, etc. But she stopped, she came back from that. For me, that's a great role model. Showing that just because you use to do bad things, doesn't make you a bad person.

Now during the book she threatens to revert back after she's brought back to the academy but that's normal too.

Lissa has her own mental issues that have to do with her strange abilities to heal.

I like this because these are flawed girls that people can understand. They have issues they're trying to overcome and it really did remind me of high school in that trying to find your own path sort of way.

Rose even starts to fall for her hot instructor who is seven years older than she is. Instead of just trying to seduce him, she fights it, not liking their age difference. So does he.

I mean, the book just had a lot of elements I loved and I'm looking forward to starting the first one.

Because of some of the mature content of it, while its technically YA and thus goes on the Kids Menu, it has some adult themes and I just feel it really belongs on the Savory Selection.

Either way, give the book a try. Let me know what you think!