2011 Young Adult Contemporary Challenge

Reggie over at The Undercover Book Lover is hosting an awesome challenge! The challenge is for readers to read, 13 Contemporary young adult books. 



What is contemporary? It's the genre wherein the events can happen in real life at the present time. The characters in the novel can be present in real life. (taken from Reggie's blog)


Everyones been reading paranormal ya books (myself included) so it is going to be a nice change to read some contemporary books. 


Did I mention she is giving out some prizes?! Yes. Very awesome. So head over to Reggies blog to see the contest rules and sign on up!


-S

Vampire Academy Series; Richelle Mead

Since this is my first review, I thought I would go a little easy and review something I LOVE. 


Vampire Academy! This is by far one of my favorite Vampire series, because it is so raw and so real. 




There are 6 books in this series (with a spin-off coming soon):


Vampire Academy
Frostbite
Shadowkiss 
Blood Promise
Spirit Bound
Last Sacrifice

The series starts with the heroine Rose Hathaway and her best friend, Lissa Dragomir on the run from the authorities. The two had escaped their school, St. Vladimir academy, which is an elite school filled with Moroi and Dhampirs. A Moroi is a full-blooded vampire and they have a ranking system much like a kingdom, Queen and all. The Dhampirs are at St. Vlads' being trained to become guardians, who work to keep the Moroi safe. Once Rose and Lissa are captured and taken back to school, Rose is hellbent on becoming Lissa's guardian, this means that she must prove herself to the administration. It also means that she has to work her ass off with her trainer to catch up on lost time. Enter Dimitri *collective sigh*. The series shows Rose and her trials and tribulations while trying to become Lissa's guardian.  I do not want to give a lot out about the series, so we will end it on that note. 
          I think the series as a whole really comes down to loyalty and friendship. The message gets lost in the action at points, but after stepping back and thinking, I was able to see that everything that Rose did, was for others. And believe me, Rose does some really stupid stuff, there were plenty of times I wanted to smack her. But every time she did something that stupid,  she was doing it to help someone she loves. I cannot hate that. no matter how badly I wanted to at times. 

The characters that you need to keep track of:
Rose Hathaway- Lead heroine- Dhampir
Vasilisa Dragomir- Rose's best friend- Moroi elite
Christian Ozera- Lissa's boyfriend- Moroi elite
Dimitri Belikov- :Lissa's Guardian-Dhampir
Adrian Ishakov- Moroi elite

I would recommend this series to anybody who loves young adult paranormal books, or vampires.

Hear me out

Everyone has opinions. Everyones' opinions count. I want to make mine heard.

This is the basis for the blog, I want to be able to share my opinions with other people. I think it is important for everyone to have a say. I ENCOURAGE people to agree or disagree, thats the beauty of art, it is open to interpretation. I also want to be able to open people eyes to new books or genres, there are a lot of great books hidden out there, and they deserve some credit too ;)

With that being said, I will review books as often as I can. The first so many blogs will be books that I have previously read. I will also add books that I am just finishing. 

With all of this, I hope you enjoy the reviews I will be posting!

-S