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A review by brokenrecord
Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
4.0
3.5 stars, although I actually liked this a lot more than I expected to! I mean, YA vampire stories definitely make me hesitant, because even though I love YA and tend to prefer fantasy/paranormal stuff to other genres, I tend not to be as into vampires as other paranormal creatures, and there was just a flood of terrible teen/vamp romance books after Twilight that made me avoid most books focusing on vampires altogether. But this was really enjoyable! I mean, it helped that neither of the romances were teen/vamp, they were vamp/vamp and guardian/guardian. I enjoyed Christian and Lissa a lot together. I liked Dimitri and Rose, but I'm not totally sold on them yet. The age difference and teacher/student thing is a little too much for me, and the power dynamics also don't help (although at least he was more of a training partner to her than an actual teacher. Like, he wasn't giving her a grade in a class or anything. It was more like a tutor/student relationship). It helped that there wasn't this instant attraction where Rose was constantly thinking about how into him she was; I liked the more gradual development of their romance, and that there was no instalove. But Rose did seem pretty immature at times, which made it hard for me to get on board with her developing a relationship with a 24 year old.
This book did have some issues with slut shaming that really bothered me. I really didn't like Dimitri when he was yelling at Rose after he found her making out with Jesse about how she was making herself look cheap and how she didn't have any respect for herself or whatever (although the later reveal that he was mostly upset about the idea of another royal taking advantage of a dhampir girl helped slightly? But he still shouldn't have said what he said). And like, if it was only Dimitri, I would just hate his character and move on, but Rose also seemed to slut shame other girls, and the whole attitude towards blood whores really bothered me. I also didn't like that I couldn't tell if the book was endorsing Rose's view, or if we were supposed to think she was wrong. And I have really mixed feelings about Mia's character. She does some pretty terrible things, but I had some sympathy for her after some stuff is revealed about her, and it bothered me that Rose's attitude towards her basically stays completely the same even after she finds out that stuff. And there was just a lot of slut shaming on both sides of the Mia/Rose feud, which frustrated me.
But despite all the negatives, I did like this a lot! Rose and Lissa's friendship was SO amazing, and I appreciated that their friendship was a greater focus of the book than either of the romances. The pacing of the end felt kind of weird and rushed? But otherwise I liked how information was slowly revealed throughout the story, and I found myself more invested in what was going on than I expected. I also thought the examination of mental illness through what was going on with Lissa from a paranormal perspective was really interesting and not something I have seen that often in these kinds of books, and it was handled really well, so I appreciated that a lot. So yeah, this was pretty good! I will definitely be reading the next book in this series!
This book did have some issues with slut shaming that really bothered me. I really didn't like Dimitri when he was yelling at Rose after he found her making out with Jesse about how she was making herself look cheap and how she didn't have any respect for herself or whatever (although the later reveal that he was mostly upset about the idea of another royal taking advantage of a dhampir girl helped slightly? But he still shouldn't have said what he said). And like, if it was only Dimitri, I would just hate his character and move on, but Rose also seemed to slut shame other girls, and the whole attitude towards blood whores really bothered me. I also didn't like that I couldn't tell if the book was endorsing Rose's view, or if we were supposed to think she was wrong. And I have really mixed feelings about Mia's character. She does some pretty terrible things, but I had some sympathy for her after some stuff is revealed about her, and it bothered me that Rose's attitude towards her basically stays completely the same even after she finds out that stuff. And there was just a lot of slut shaming on both sides of the Mia/Rose feud, which frustrated me.
But despite all the negatives, I did like this a lot! Rose and Lissa's friendship was SO amazing, and I appreciated that their friendship was a greater focus of the book than either of the romances. The pacing of the end felt kind of weird and rushed? But otherwise I liked how information was slowly revealed throughout the story, and I found myself more invested in what was going on than I expected. I also thought the examination of mental illness through what was going on with Lissa from a paranormal perspective was really interesting and not something I have seen that often in these kinds of books, and it was handled really well, so I appreciated that a lot. So yeah, this was pretty good! I will definitely be reading the next book in this series!