Vampire Academy Book 8

First of all I will announce the contest winners sometime before Monday(so yes, sometime on Easter Sunday). I apologize for the delay; I just haven't  had time to tally entries and do random.org. As some people suggested, my next contest will be rafflecopter.


Okay, so the Vampire Academy...I loved the rich description of the Vampire Academy campus and the Moroi royalty/traditions. There were a lot of things about this book that were interesting and unique, but I found one major element of the premise unbelievable. Dhampir (vampire human hybrids) will train and spend their life protecting Moroi(living vampires) because they cannot procreate with humans or other dhampirs, just Moroi. Except Moroi women will never marry a dhampir and Moroi men probably won't marry a dhampir but they don't mind creating babies with them out of wedlock. Those babies either end up raised by the Vampire Academy to guard the Moroi or living in a colony of single dhampir women referred to as blood whore communes because the Moroi father has nothing to do to them. I found it hard to believe that dhampirs would be so concerned about furthering their species they were willing to endure this kind of second class citizenship just to reproduce. And the second class citizenship isn't really discussed in the book.
Also, I thought this was a paranormal romance. When the MC, Rose, met another dhampir who was both hot and interesting at the beginning of the book I expected the book to be about the two of them, especially with the blurb about forbidden love. The book is more about Rose's need to protect Lissa and how hard it is to do it. Lissa has her own forbidden love story going on that we watch through Rose and Lissa's "bond" which allows Rose into Lissa's head. But for me, neither romance was really developed enough.
This was a plot driven book that stayed interesting pretty much from the inciting incident all the way through to the end, but for me I would have liked more romance. I also found the back of the book and some of the blurbs misleading. All in all I would say this is a 3 star read, but not for me.