First off, thank you to Razorbill for sending me a copy (: It is greatly appreciated~!

Oh. My. GOSH. Richelle Mead has rendered me speechless (and if you know me, that’s hard to do). To be honest, I don’t even care what happened during the book, it was the end, THE VERY END, that killed me. Stick a fork in me and I’m done. You don’t even know how much I was reeling when the book finished. My gosh.

Throughout the novel, Sydney is stuck between herself as she gets closer and closer to her Moroi and Dhampir friends, she finds herself questioning her Alchemist ties. This becomes even more prominent when she finds herself tangled in the Alchemist history: something often censored to her. With the disappearance of a Moroi, Sydney must find a way to save them, all while trying to stay true to her Alchemist bonds, to wade through the long and tedious history of the Alchemists, and to get through a date with her new boyfriend Brayden without Adrian interrupting.

This book keeps you on the edge of your seat anticipating what’ll happen next. Full of betrayal, first time romances, totally surprising events, and a history so complicated, it’d be easier finding a needle in the Pacific Ocean (okay… maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you know…), this book will get you hooked from the start, and the end will leave you wanting and begging for more, or will result in you screaming, pulling your hair out, or violent acts towards the physical novel itself. I seriously LOVED every second of this book (maybe it’s ’cause I LOVE Adrian, or just ’cause all of Richelle Mead’s novels seem to just blow me away… regardless, it was awesome!).

If you hate cliffhangers/that hyper feeling where you just want to jump to the next book RIGHT AFTER you’ve finished the previous one, well you might want to wait until next January-March to read the book, I’m just saying.

Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
World Building: 5/5
Cover: 5/5
Overall: 5/5
GoodReads Rating: 4.43/5

-review by Between Printed Pages