Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

It's springtime at St. Vladimir's Academy, and Rose Hathaway is this close to graduation. Since making her first Strigoi kills, Rose hasn't been feeling quite right. She's having dark thoughts, behaving erratically, and worst of all... might be seeing ghosts.

As Rose questions her sanity, new complications arise. Lissa has begun experimenting with her magic once more, their enemy Victor Dashkov might be set free, and Rose's forbidden relationship with Dimitri is starting to heat up again. But when a deadly threat no one saw coming changes their entire world, Rose must put her own life on the line - and choose between the two people she loves most.Pink highlighting are spoilers, just highlight over them to see them      



---------------------------------------------------

                        Rating:  4.5  of 5 stars

                        Series book: Yes 

                       Will I read the Next: Yes

You. Can't. Do. This. I cannot. How can this even happen? This is so wrong I...I...I...

Okay. Okay. Calm down. We can fix this. Magic or something....expelliarmus! I'm just done right now. If  Harry Potter doesn't work nothing will. I kinda sound like I'm rambling right now. So let me calm down and explain. The end of this book makes me wanna go die in a corner. I cannot even tell you. This is it. I can't even say because I'll spoil but let's just say I didn't see the story going in this direction. I could tell that something was gonna happen but....man. This sucks.  The pain...The cliff hanger...L.I.F.E. shall never be the same. DONE. Damn you strigori. Let me stop. I'll actually review the book now. 

I feel like after I've reviewed a few books by the same author, it's kind-of unnecessary for me to reiterate everything I've already said about said author, but with different words. So I shall now copy and paste from a few of my other reviews on Richelle Mead's writing. "I don't know about you, but I consider it a real art when you can actually make a book fly by like this one did. At times I was kind of just like "Okay, details, details, blah, blah. Lets get on to the good stuff." And by good stuff I obviously mean Dimitri." 

The plot kind of had 3 mini-plots. The first plot was about Victor's trial, and the end of that trial started some romantic tension, but also started the second mini-plot which is also a large part of the overall plot. Does that make sense? Good. So the second plot is all about how crazy insane Rose may or may not be(no spoilers here). You wanna know why her sanity is in question? Rose sees dead people. And I do not mean the strigori. The third mini-plot is a secret society of moroi. The last two are huge factors in the ending, which I shall not mention. All in all, the plot was pretty good. I kind of saw a lot of it coming, but the very end still shocked me. I'm in shock.

Lissa, Lissa, Lissa. You have showed your true colors with that ending. Tisk, tisk, you little brat. Throughout these three books, I've like  Lissa. But at the end of this chapter she just pissed me off with her selfishness. You would think she'd support Rose, even try to tag along, but she did the opposite. Disappointed in you, Lissa. The rest of the characters I was fine with, Adrian and Dimitri are kind of competing for my favorite. On one hand, Adrian is funny but can also be perceptive. On the other, its Dimitri. You can also see a noticeable change in Rose. She's really grown stronger as a person, I think.

There was some tension romantically in this book. Christian was getting overly jealous of Lissa training with Adrian and insisted that he wanted to get with her, when in reality Adrian only wants Rose. Rose won't give him the time of day because of Dimitri, which is understandable because hey, it's Dimitri. What did I not like? Well, at the very end of the book Rose totally leading Adrian on and that was way low. I loved how Dimitri and Rose's relationship was escalating, and escalating alot.

Favorite Quotes:

“You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.''
"No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.” 

“He stepped back and threw his arms out.
"I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you."
He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky:
"Rose is in red
But never in blue
Sharp as a thorn
Fights like one too.” 

“What's up?" I asked.
You tell me," he said. "You were the one about ready to start making out with Adrian."
It was an experiment," I said. "It was part of my therapy."
What the hell kind of therapy are you in?” 

SUMMARY OF REVIEW(In case you don't actually feel like reading the review):

Writing: 4.5 out of 5

Plot: 5 out of 5

characters: 4 out of 5  

Romance: 4 out of 5

Overall: 4.5 out of 5

PG-13