The Golden Lily (Bloodlines #2)

The Golden Lily (Bloodlines #2)

-       Richelle Mead

Publisher: RazorBill

Tough, brainy alchemist Sydney Sage and doe-eyed Moroi princess Jill Dragomir are in hiding at a human boarding school in the sunny, glamorous world of Palm Springs, California. The students--children of the wealthy and powerful--carry on with their lives in blissful ignorance, while Sydney, Jill, Eddie, and Adrian must do everything in their power to keep their secret safe. But with forbidden romances, unexpected spirit bonds, and the threat of Strigoi moving ever closer, hiding the truth is harder than anyone thought.

I honestly can’t tell you how comfortable it is to fall back into Richelle Mead’s Moroi world – it’s like collapsing into a soft armchair at the end of a long day and putting your feet up. This time we follow alchemist, Sydney as she continues to protect humans from the knowledge of vampires while hiding Jill from those who would use her against Lissa, the Moroi queen.

Sydney isn’t a physical heroine like Rose – she can’t fight, but she does use her brain and knowledge a lot. She even starts taking some self defence lessons here so she won’t be as vulnerable and always waiting to let someone rescue her. I like that element of her character. Kick-ass heroines are always a lot of fun – but a brainy heroine who loves learning? That’s someone I can relate to! She is fairly clueless in the social arena and it was fun to follow her on dates and complete miss some social clues. Adrian as well appears to have finally started growing up. There is some heartbreaking insight into his family life – and it was good to see Adrian finally taking control of his own destiny at last. I loved seeing Dimitri away from Rose and from another perspective as well!

Again, I found this a rather slow burn – always appealing, but slow with some exciting action towards the end. There was some great relationship development and the last page had me feeling so much for our characters – I wanted to give them a big hug! Sydney continues to struggle to reconcile her alchemist upbringing insisting that all vampires are unnatural with her developing friendships with the Moroi and dhampires and I really want to see how this develops over further books.

Richelle Mead’s biggest strength is the ease at which it is to keep turning pages and how absorbing the world is – I want these books to be longer, despite being over 400 pages each. It’s going to be a long wait for the third book in this series.

Recommended for fans of Jennifer Estep and Lili St-Crow. 8.5 out of 10.