Review: Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy #3) by Richelle Mead

Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Series: Vampire Academy, #3

Synopsis (goodreads): Rose Hathaway knows it is forbidden to love another guardian. Her best friend, Lissa-the last Dragomir princess-must always come first. Unfortunately, when it comes to gorgeous Dimitri Belikov, some rules are meant to be broken...

But since making her first Strigoi kills, Rose hasn't been feeling right. Something dark has begun to grow in her mind, and ghostly shadows warn of a terrible evil drawing nearer to the Academy's iron gates. And now that Lissa and Rose's sworn enemy, Victor Dashkov, is on trial for his freedom, tensions in the Moroi world are higher than ever.

Lying to Lissa about Dimitri is one thing but suddenly there's way more than friendship at stake. The immortal undead are on the prowl, and they want vengeance for the lives that Rose has stolen. In a heart-stopping battle to rival her worst nightmare, Rose will have to choose between life, love, and the two people who matter most..but will her choice mean that only one can survive?

Review

They come first. The most important rule of all the guardians. The Moroi come first. Not themselves, or someone else they may love, but the Moroi. Rose knows this. It's her absolute truth. And when it comes to Lissa, she follows that rule. Yes, Lissa is a Royal. The last Dragomir. Sweet. Kind. Charismatic. And yet, I find her to be absolutely boring, except for the few times she's managed to embrace her dark side. Any other time, she seems to me to be very childlike and naive. And extremely selfish. I don't see the charisma and charm in her that the Moroi seem to see in her, or even what Rose or Christian see in her. To me, she just isn't likeable. Especially at the very end of the book.

In the beginning of Shadow Kiss, Rose inadvertently finds out that Victor Dashkov, who tortured Lissa to use her power of healing, is on trial at the Royal Court, but isn't invited. None of the student witnesses are, and Rose is enraged. As she should be. Luckily for her and the other students who were involved, some strings are pulled and they are taken to the Court to testify against him.

Rose has also begun to see ghosts. Not just any ghost, but her dead friend Mason, who was killed by a Strigoi. And it seems that he is trying to tell her something, only she can't understand what that is because he has no voice. He can't speak. And after a terrible incident with a major headache and several ghosts pressing in on her, she finally tells Dimitri and Dr. Olendzski what happened. But they don't believe her. Not completely.

And then there's Adrian, who is a little crazy, but you can tell that he really truly cares about Rose and if it weren't for Dimitri, I would be saying "Team Adrian all the way!" but to me Dimitri is it for Rose. He has been from the very beginning of the series for me.

This book did start out rather slow to me, and it remained slow until about halfway through the book. Maybe a little after that. I'm not sure why because I really did enjoy this book very much. I must have just been in one of my gotta-have-some-major-action-going-on moods. That's probably why I sped through the ending of the book. Insane action that kept me turning the pages. I couldn't put it down. I had to know what was going to happen, and I had to know that everything was going to be okay for these beloved characters. I'm not going to give anything away, but I was rather disappointed at the end of this book. Probably because it didn't go as I had wanted it to, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give up on this amazing series. The ending was rather ironic I believe and there was some major foreshadowing for it in the previous books, but you just don't realize it until the end of this one. I'm hoping that everything works out in the end but right now I'm just not seeing how it could possible turn around at this point. I suppose I'll just have to wait until the next two books in the series arrive in my mailbox in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later.

I rate this book: