Book Review: Shadow Kiss

Title: Shadow Kiss
Author: Richelle Mead
Publisher: Razorbill
Series: Vampire Academy #3
Release Date: 13/11/2008
Pages: 480
Format: Paperback
Buy: Book Depository
Author Twitter: @RichelleMead

'It's springtime at St. Vladimir's Academy, and Rose Hathaway is close to graduation. Since making her first Strigoi kills, Rose hasn't been feeling quite right. She's been having dark thoughts, behaving erratically, and worst of all... might be seeing ghosts. 

As Rose questions her sanity, new complications arise. Lissa has been experimenting with her magic once more, their enemy, Victor Dashkov, might be set free, and Rose's forbidden relationship with Dimitri is starting to heat up again. But when a deadly threat no one saw coming changes their entire world, Rose must put her own life on the line - and choose between the two people she loves most.'

So many feelings about this book and they are all positive! I loved this book so much more than I expected to. I love the Vampire Academy series anyway but this book made me love the series so much more, I didn't even think that was possible. 

Shadow Kiss, for me, had so much more going on in the plot, and not in the confusing sort of way where you can't follow what's going on. It was so much more action packed and I felt that the plot gave the reader so much more in the book than the others. You could see the plot taking the front seat as a lot of the explanation had been done in the past two books. I was constantly guessing what was going to happen next and there were so many surprises in the book that made me have to reread just to double check what I had read. 

Character development in this book was, once again, done extremely well. Once thing that I was really happy with by the end of this book was the fact that we saw Rose actually go through raw emotions after killing Strigoi and having everything that happened in the last book catch up with her. It wasn't one of these things, where she was acting like she was invincible and nothing was affecting her. You could see the knock on events from Frostbite and it was nice to see that they weren't being brushed under the carpet and instead they ended up playing a big part in the plot. 

One thing that I really enjoyed reading in the book was the way Christian and Rose were interacting. It was so much of a strain for them to get along with each other and they had the odd compliment. It was just nice to see their relationship growing in terms of friendship. I loved seeing more of Christian and Lissa's relationship and how it's still very prominent that Christian really cares for her and is very protective of her regardless of what other people were saying. 

I was so happy to see that Adrian Ivashkov was back in this book. I think I ended up falling even more in love with his character in this book. You could see a more serious side come out of him in this book but I still loved the way that he joked around. This was a character that I thought Mead wrote really well. Victor Dashkov is still a character that makes my skin crawl and I have a feeling he is going to be turning up later on in the series. 

I don't want to end up spoiling too much of the book, but this time around you could really see how some relationships blossomed and how you could see the crack in some relationships. It was an action packed book that kept me wanting to turn the page. For me, it was Mead's best work in the series so far. 

Rating: ★★★★★