The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead

Title: The Golden Lily 
Author: Richelle Mead 
Series: Bloodlines series book one
Publisher: Razorbill 
Date Published: June 12th, 2012

Buy: Amazon 

Goodreads 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?

I slept with this book for about two weeks while I was in hospital and when I got out, for some reason I just couldn’t get to it and I couldn’t bring myself to reading it. Which sucked cause I really wanted to read it.

… When Dimitir and Eddie walked in being all dangerous and hot I couldn’t help myself but to read it in slow motion to make it look even more awesome (if that was possible). And it was.

So I don’t have the same views as Sidney about vampires and magic- how she doesn’t like Jill using hers in front of her or Adrian being a vampire and all that and I get it cause she was brought up that way and she has to feel this way. But I would love that the idea of vampires, and magic and just them but then again that’s just me and it would be kind of boring if Sidney agreed to everything. The way the book was written in her voice, it was really clear about the reasons why she felt that way that she did and it was so convincing which made it 10 times better. In Bloodlines I distanced myself from her, I couldn’t get into her mind and why she thought/ did some of the stuff she did but during this book all of that was gone and for me that was what made this book so much more better then Bloodlines.

Actually on second thoughts I don’t know if it was better than Bloodlines- both books are epic and awesome and just beautiful. I can’t bring myself to choose between the two it’s like choosing which child you love more.

The book lacks romance big time! And I am gutted by that as Richelle is so good at writing romantic and hot scenes but there is clearly something going on between Sidney and Adrian and that made it bearable. Just.

And what I like about their relationship is that it’s not being rushed, they clearly care about each other but it’s taking their time and I love that it’s so cute and I want to be the girl that Adrian is lusting over.  

For me this new series has everything that Vampire Academy had. It has danger, action, some romance, it’s funny, cute, and very lovable. With no doubt this is one of the best books/ series’ I’ve read.

One thing that I didn’t really like was the ending. I loved what happened I hated how it ended so quickly!

I cannot wait for the next book! If I could, I would go to sleep and have someone wake me up when the book comes out! Maybe I’ll have a dream about Dimitir and Adrian… but then I wouldn’t want to wake up ever again so that’s out of the question.