Book Review: The Golden Lily (Bloodlines, #2) by Richelle Mead

Title: The Golden Lily

Author: Richelle Mead

Summary:  Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.

Sydney would love to go to college, but instead, she’s been sent into hiding at a posh boarding school in Palm Springs, California–tasked with protecting Moroi princess Jill Dragomir from assassins who want to throw the Moroi court into civil war. Formerly in disgrace, Sydney is now praised for her loyalty and obedience, and held up as the model of an exemplary Alchemist.

But the closer she grows to Jill, Eddie, and especially Adrian, the more she finds herself questioning her age–old Alchemist beliefs, her idea of family, and the sense of what it means to truly belong. Her world becomes even more complicated when magical experiments show Sydney may hold the key to prevent becoming Strigoi—the fiercest vampires, the ones who don’t die. But it’s her fear of being just that—special, magical, powerful—that scares her more than anything. Equally daunting is her new romance with Brayden, a cute, brainy guy who seems to be her match in every way. Yet, as perfect as he seems, Sydney finds herself being drawn to someone else—someone forbidden to her.

When a shocking secret threatens to tear the vampire world apart, Sydney’s loyalties are suddenly tested more than ever before. She wonders how she’s supposed to strike a balance between the principles and dogmas she’s been taught, and what her instincts are now telling her.

Should she trust the Alchemists—or her heart? -Goodreads

Review:

2013 Review

**Warning: Spoilers!**

I absolutely loved Bloodlines (and Adrian!)!  I was really excited to read The Golden Lily, too.  I also realized that The Fiery Heart, book four in the series, was just recently released.

At one point when I was reading, there was a spider in my book (I have no idea how) and I was just frantically shaking the book around in public, of course, lol.  I’ve got some pretty whacky spider stories…

This cover was no better than the first, but I did like the color scheme.  As usual, I wasn’t a fan of the faces  That’s not at all how I ever imagine Sydney (but I found the perfect Adrian :D).

This book started off a bit faster than the last, but I did have a bit of trouble getting into it and spent a few days, uh, not reading it.  When I read the summary and saw that Sydney would be in a romantic relationship with some Brayden dude, I was like, “NOO!!!”  But then, the summary said, “Yet, as perfect as he seems Sydney finds herself being drawn to someone else–someone forbidden to her.”  ADRIAN?!  Y’know, he’s totally forbidden, with him being a vampire and all.

Anyway, this book was very, very funny.  There were so many times when I’d find myself laughing silently because of something someone said.  Ah, good times xD

Sydney is probably one of the few main characters that I don’t mind.  She’s pretty cool and is usually on top of things.  The only thing about her that I hate is her obsession for being the skinniest girl alive.  Seriously.  Go eat something.

Anyway, she’s always sensitive about magic, let alone vampire magic, and turns into Mrs. I’m So Freaked.

When Sydney first met Brayden, they were totally geeking out about Latin and I was just giggling like a madwoman.  And, of course, Brayden liked practically everything that Sydney liked–that was the telltale sign that it wouldn’t work out.  And, another telltale sign was Adrian, but… well… heheh.

OMG, it’s like when Katy (Lux) was all into Blake–same thing.  I was like, “SYDNEY, DON’T YOU DARE FORGET ABOUT ADRIAN!!!  (How does one forget about him, anyway?)”

Also, Brayden was being such a jerk face when Sydney was with Adrian and Brayden kept texting her about how long she’d take to come back to the dance or whatever.  UH, HER “BROTHER” IS DRUNK AND SHE’S TRYING TO HELP HIM HOME.  YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, BUD?

Adrian is Adrian is Adrian is Adrian.  I think this guy, Ian Somerhalder, would be perfect as Adrian:

Just give him green eyes, right?!  Right?!  Isn’t he perfect?!  Eeeek!

Anyway, in this book, I was really beginning to wonder if he was bipolar… Y’all know I simply adore Adrian (if that wasn’t obvious), especially in this book.  Sydney was talking to him about how with Brayden, she didn’t have to dumb herself down for people to understand her, and Adrian told her that she didn’t have to dumb herself down in front of him.  What a sweetie!  I totally relished all Sydrian moments 😀

Oh, goodness grief.. So, Adrian finally got a car, but he apparently “couldn’t drive stick shift.”  So Sydney was all, “Why on earth would you buy a car like this if you can’t even drive a stick?”  And Adrian was like, “I like the color.  It matches my living room.”  BWAHAHA!!!  But then later, we find out that Adrian was pretending he couldn’t drive stick shift to spend time with Sydney ^.^ AWWW!

OMG–Adrian and Sydney almost kissed!!!  And the next day, Jill was, like, complimenting Sydney excessively.  So I was wondering if that was influenced by Adrian’s feelings through the bond.

But then they DID kiss for real and I was all, “THEY KISSED!!!  THEY KISSED, THEY KISSED, THEYKISSEDTHEYKISSEDTHEYKISSED!!!  OMG, THEY TOTALLY KISSED!”

And Sydney shot him down!  And it was, like, the last thing that happened in the book!  UGH!!!  The book ended with Sydney just… walking away from Adrian’s place.  (Lucky me, I had The Indigo Spell, so I started it ASAP.)

Mr. Ivashkov (Adrian’s dad) kind of reminded me of St. Clair’s dad (Anna and the French Kiss).  One of those people who acts all polite in public around company but when the people are gone, that person turns into a horrible idiot.  The relationship between Adrian and his dad was very much like that of St. Clair’s:

Both men had fathers who wouldn’t let them have any contact with their mothers, they both had tense relationships with their fathers…

I really liked Trey, who adopted the nickname, Melbourne, for Sydney.  But then he went all creeper on Sydney.  He was, like, staring at Jill and telling Sydney, “You’re smart to keep her out of modeling, she’s too young, lots of creepers out there.”  I was getting creeped out by that weird conversation!  But then we find out his family is from the Warriors of Light or whatever they were called.  Gahh…

Anyway, Trey was involved with Sonya’s kidnapping.  Eeek!  And I liked him!

Eddie was awesome, too.  Eddie and Angeline were hilarious.  Here she was, getting all suggestive with him, and Eddie’s all pining for Jill.  Heheh.  But it must have been so horrible for Eddie to watch Jill go out with his roommate–and he even encouraged it!

I couldn’t stop laughing during the “Healthy Lifestyles” pep rally (pp. 162-164).

Kristin and Julia were like Katy’s friends in Obsidian, Carissa and Lesa, and they reminded me of Bella’s friends in Twilight.

At first, I had a bad feeling about Wolfe, the self-defense instructor, but he turned out to be awesome!

Mrs. Terwilliger reminded me of Ms. Sophie from Fallen… kind of.  Even though Ms. Terwilliger is a forty-year-old woman, I can’t help but think of her as an old lady, like Ms. Sophie.  ‘Cause she was an old lady, right?  Right?

So, in The Golden Lily, Sydney had a lot of doubts in her Alchemist beliefs, and she was always wondering if she was doing the right thing.  I LOVE that Sydney was questioning everything.  I found that very dystopian-esque, y’know?

I loved all of the cover story screw-ups they had, lol.  They were pretty dang funny.

“Adrian was along because he and Jill had a psychic bond that had been inadvertently created when he’d used his magic to save her life.”  Uhh… it was like that in Obsidian, too, with Katy and Daemon… Hmm… (I think I elaborate more in my review for Opal (Lux, #3) by Jennifer L. Armentrout.  The review should be up soon…)

Favorite Lines:

“Besides, when not hard at work with this research, I’m actually conducting a side experiment on how cigarettes and gin increase charisma.  As you might guess, the results are looking very promising.”  Ha!  Could you guess who that was?  Adrian speaking to Mr. Dimitri Belikov.  I got to finally meet the famous Dimitri, a main character in the Vampire Academy series.  He was… eh.  (I’m not feelin’ the actor they chose for him for VA.)  Maybe it’s because this is the spinoff to VA, so people already know him.  Anywho, he was very chivalrous.  (And, I read VA!  I’m pretty sure I haven’t put up a review for that, but look out for one!)

~

I had just set down my phone when another text message buzzed.  Unexpectedly, it was from Adrian.  How r u feeling after last night?  Benn worried about u.  Adrian was articulate in e-mail but often resorted to abbreviations in texts–something I could never bring myself to do.

Hahahaha!  I used to be like that as well but dropped the habit.  Is it really that hard to type in that one letter you left out of the word?

~

(Most Annoying Line): “Sage is convinced one extraneous calorie will make her go from super skinny to just regular skinny.  Tragedy.”

Sonya, Jill… they could all eat whatever they wanted and still keep those amazing bodies.  Meanwhile, I labored over every calorie and still couldn’t reach that level of perfection.  Fitting into these size four khakis had been a triumph this morning.  Now, looking at Sonya’s slender build, I felt enormous by comparison.

GIRL, QUIT OBSESSING OVER YOUR WEIGHT AND GO EAT A BOX OF PIZZA!  SERIOUSLY, YOU NEED IT.  Seriously, what the heck is this?!  I mentioned this in my review for Bloodlines.  This… way to make everyone feel bad about themselves, y’know?  She got Adrian and herself slushies after the meeting gone wrong with his father.  I mean, yeah, it’s nice she was trying to comfort Adrian, but after that, all she could think of was that skipping lunch wouldn’t compensate for the sugar-filled drink and she’d be a pound more than she was before the slush.  *face palm*

~

“You need me?  You yell.  You want to leave?  We go.  I’ll get you out of here, no matter what.”  AWWW!!!  That was Adrian talking to Sydney when they were at Terwilliger’s place.  I think she was doing the scrying spell or something.

5/5 stars for this book!  This series is incredible!  It’s funny, awesome, fun to read.  I’m enjoying every moment of it!  I tried to sort all my notes out because they were kind of a mess.  Hopefully, this isn’t too confusing and it’s all in order.  And a big virtual hug to y’all who actually read all of this rambling 😀