Book Review: Vampire Academy: Shadow Kiss

                                                         Shadow Kiss Review

This book is the third book in the Vampire Academy series and takes place a few weeks after the last book ended. Rose and the rest of the guardians are starting their field training by guarding their assigned Mori to follow around for the next few weeks in order to gain experience that they need in order to graduate. Rose assumes that she will be guarding Lissa since she's going to be Lissa's guardian after they graduate but she was instead assigned to Christian and her friend Eddie was assigned to Lissa which makes Rose angry but it's explained to her that the school wants her and Lissa to know what it's like to guard/be guarded by someone who you don't share a psychic link. Rose's field experience training was already off to a rough start but things get even worse when she starts seeing her friend Mason's ghost around campus which cause her to freeze up when she usually wouldn't.

At the start of this book Lissa also starts to use her spirit magic again which is something Rose worries about greatly since the last time Lissa was using it regularly it drove her crazy although this time it looks like it might be driving Rose crazy instead. This book also includes Victor the Mori from the first book who kidnapped Lissa and tried to make her agree to heal him over and over again finally being sentenced for his crimes which leads our characters to the royal court. The queen seems to be taking an interest in Lissa and thinks that she could have a career in politics if she spends her time with the right kind of people. On campus there is a group of  royal Mori who think that they are changing how their society work by using their magic on each other but are really just causing trouble.

This book also has Rose deal with how she will be giving up a lot of things in her life by being Lissa's guardian and having her actually think about whether or not it is worth it. I like that in this book Rose is thinking about all the things that she isn't really allowed since her life has to be devoted to Lissa rather than her only really feeling like she's missing out on a relationship with Dimitri because the Mori have to come first. I was also super happy that Rose and Dimitri's relationship finally started to work for me in this book even though I still don't love them, I'm glad that I at least care enough to want it to happen one day.

Overall I thought this book had a much better sense of plot than the first two books in the series and I thought that the characters were great as always. I really liked that this book once again had more focus on Rose and Lissa's relationship and Lissa and Christian's relationship which were my two favorite relationships in the first book that didn't have a lot of focus in second book. I liked that we got to see more of Adrian and I actually find his relationship with Rose more interesting than her relationship with Dimitri. I liked how this book expanded upon the mythology of this series as well. Overall this was a good read that I had a fun time reading, please tell me your thoughts on this book or series as a whole in the comment section below.

Movie Review: Then You Came

                                                        Then You Came Review

Then You Came is about a Calvin(Asa Butterfield)a nineteen year old hypochondriac who while at a cancer support group because his doctor recommend he went to get some perspective on his issue he meets Skye(Maisie Williams) a teenage girl who is full of life but is pretty close to dying of cancer that there is nothing she can do to get rid of. Skye ends up befriending Calvin almost by force and she recruits him to help her complete her unconventional bucket list and the two end up becoming friends over time. Skye ends up getting Calvin to come out of his shell and to actual enjoy his life rather than always fearing he's dying and Calvin is someone who is always there for Skye when she needs someone or just be with her whenever she's doing the next crazy thing on her list.

The movie also deals with Skye trying to find ways to make it a bit easier for her parents to deal with her passing before she dies because she knows that she only has so much time left and that her parents will be devastated by her passing no matter how much they try to appear strong for her. Another subplot in this movie has to do with Calvin having a crush on his co-worker Izzy(Nina Dobrev) who Skye helps him connected with who unfortunately believes that Calvin has cancer and since it takes him so long to clear this fact up it causes problems in their relationship before it even starts.

Overall I really loved this movie it was both a heartwarming and heartbreaking movie that centered around a friendship that I really enjoyed. Please tell me your thoughts on this movie in the comment section below.

Book Review: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

                                  The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Review

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is about a teenage boy named Henry "Monty" Montague who is a son of a lord in the 1700s who is known to be a troublemaker because of his fondness for drinking, gambling and fooling around with both girls and boys. Monty is to spend the next couple months touring Europe with his best friend Percy(a biracial boy who is being raised by his well respected/wealthy relatives) who Monty is secretly in love with as well as his sister Felicity who wants to study medicine one day even though society discourages it. The touring is going to be last chance that Monty will be able to have freedom from his father and to spend time with Percy for quite sometime so Monty is seeing the tour as his last chance at happiness which leads to him being upset when his father hires someone to look after him on the tour.

After only a short while on tour Monty feels insulted by the former prime minister of France so while he's in his office he ends up stealing a box from him which ends up leading to dangerous people chasing after the group in order to get the box back. Monty, Percy and Felicity end up on their own for sometime and after discovering that the box was stolen and that it has a cure for all illnesses locked inside of it the group has to decide whether or not they should bring the box back to its rightful owner's. Monty after discovering that Percy is suffering from Epilepsy and is being forced into an asylum because of it decides that they have to bring the box back to its rightful owners because he's hoping that they will have a way to make Percy well again which would mean that he won't have to loose him in the near future.

This book is great it takes a lot of turns I wasn't expecting in its plot and it has really interesting characters who are all struggling to fit into the 1700s European expectations of them which makes them all the more interesting and outsiders in their own ways. I really loved seeing the characters grow over the course of the book and began to understand each other more as the story goes which leads to them becoming closer. I really loved how the characters grew to accept themselves more despite society's expectations of them by the end of the book. I really loved the relationship between Monty and Percy and was pleasantly surprised about how their relationship turned out in the end. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below.