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.