100 and Counting

Tonight I finished my 101st book for the year, obviously surpassing my goal of reading 100 books this year. Blood Promise by Richelle Mead is the fourth book in her Vampire Academy series, which tells the story of Rose Hathaway, a dhampir, who is bonded to her best friend Lissa. Because a struggle that occurs in the third book, Rose leaves her school in Montana to travel to Russia where the majority of the fourth book's action takes place.

I think my favorite book in the series, so far, is the third book, Shadow Kiss because Rose and Dimitri finally are together. I had anxiety for most of the fourth book, because I was worried about Rose and the situation she was in (trying to write about this without giving away too much). It ended with a cliffhanger (you were right Irish!) that has me hoping for a happy ending to occur in book five, Spirit Bound, which is set to be published on May 18, 2010. Eek! I have to wait eight months to find out what's going to happen! The sixth book is to be published late 2010.

Great young adult series. I'd say high school and older as there are some mature themes. I really got caught up in the characters. Of course, I liked Rose the best as she's the main character, the heroine, is tough and sassy. Sometimes I didn't care for Mead's use of exposition. In the subsequent books it seemed like a lot all at one time. I would chunk read those parts and get on to the new story telling. I did read them back to back and so if they are spaced out, thorough exposition can come in handy for short term memory loss folks like me :)

Thanks to Jen and a visit to a used book store in Arroyo Grande, I have a huge stack of books to dig into, so now I'm wondering how many I will end up reading by the time the year is up. Any guesses?