This is – hands down – my new favorite book of 2012! My only complaint about Golden Lily is that it caused me to lose sleep. I finished this book in o..Show More »ne day…and what an emotional day that was!

Normally I would write a little synopsis of the book, but not this time. Richelle Mead’s work speaks for itself. If you’re considering this book, chances are, you’ve probably not only read Bloodlines, but also the entire Vampire Academy series; if you haven’t…then welcome to the Richelle Mead fan club. With that said I’m just going to write a few little tidbits about some of the character development within this second installment of the Bloodlines series.

Richelle Mead leads us back to Palm Springs and back into the lives of Jill, Eddie, Sydney, Adrian, and Angeline. We also see more appearances from Dmitri (and his duster) and Sonya Karp than we did in Bloodlines.

Sydney goes through a lot of personal and emotional growth in this sequel. She not only learns more about the real history of Alchemists, but she also starts to realize that she has more loyalty and tolerance for the Moroi and Dhampir races…and that scares her because she doesn’t want that secret to get back to the Alchemists because they would send her to the re-education center (which she is terrified of). The prejudice that her upbringing taught her (both from her father and the Alchemists) is very hard for her to overcome and she battles with it every day. The decisions that she makes along her journey in this book will make you…. (Nope, not going to give spoilers, it’s MUCH better to not know what’s going to happen – trust me, it will be worth the wait.)

And let us not forget about the sexy, and ever-inebriated, Adrian. For anyone who fell in love with Adrian during the Vampire Academy series (or even if you just discovered him in Bloodlines), be prepared to completely swoon over him yet again. We’ve all adored this sexy man who seems like he’s in a constant battle with his mental health (thanks to his spirit magic), but in this book Adrian takes it to an all new level. I won’t give more details and spoil the plots twists & turns, but just know that hiding his feelings behind his sardonic quips and his constant smoking and drinking just isn’t going to cut it this time.

Also, the narrator, Emily Shaffer does (yet again) a wonderful job with this book. When dealing with a narrator working on a book series, I find that sometimes the characters don’t sound that same from book to book - Shaffer does not have that problem, she gave a seamless performance of all the character’s voices. Her talent for accents and having multiple characters that sound VERY different from one another is astounding.

Buy Golden Lily and get lost in between the pages. I will definitely be enjoying this book a couple more times before Bloodlines #3: The Indigo Spell comes out on February 12, 2013!!!


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