The Queen's Assassin: Or, Melissa de la Cruz's Importance In My Formative Years

I don't know how many of you read the Blue Blood's series in middle school and high school, and honestly... I think I started the books in Elementary school, in fifth grade? I don't have a very clear memory of when I started it, I just know it was A Lot(TM). As a Middle schooler, which was when I read most of it, man, that's some potent stuff.

So we start off with a girl named Schuyler who is very different from literally every other girl at her rich private school(yes now that would read as obnoxious, BUT, when you're a middle schooler, man, you really aren't going to want to think of yourself as being like anybody else!) and to top it all off she lives in a big mansion with her grandmother who doesn't really care about her, and her mother is in a fifteen year long coma at a hospital with no hopes of waking up.

Slowly over the course of book one she learns that she and many of the other students at her school are all vampires, BUT WAIT it doesn't stop there, they're vampires because they're angels that fell when Lucifer did and being a vampire cursed to reincarnate over and over again is their punishment!

It's really and truly just, so much. So formative.

Melissa de la Cruz was one of the first authors that taught me to write what made me feel good, not what I thought might sell, because what truly matters to readers is that they can see the author's heart in everything they're writing. It's important to know that what you're reading wasn't wrung out of a suffering creative drop by drop.

But, the series ended after... Seven books, I think. And I kind of moved on, I guess, but I still adore those books, heart and soul, and now, years later, here we have:

The Queen's Assassin

Now here's the actual review of the book that you've probably come for, I'd apologize but I feel like you all are used to my inane rambling at this point.

The Queen's Assassin follows two different characters, one a young woman who has trained her whole life to take after her magic wielding aunts and mother. Her aunts raised her from a young age, and this has been all she hoped for.

She wants to be as deadly as our other protagonist, Caledon Holt, and when an attack brings them together, Shadow becomes his apprentice by necessity. War is coming, and only together can they unravel the dark web threatening their kingdom.

But there's much more going on here, a reason that Shadow desperately wants to go with Cal, and it's not just because of the reverence she has for him as an assassin. I won't drop spoilers, but no, it's also not because they fall in love. (They do, this is a romance fantasy, but still.)

It's actually a really interesting twist that I kept telling myself wasn't going to happen and yet when it did, I was all for it.

It's hard to talk about much without revealing anything too spoilery, but I promise you, if you're a classic YA fan hungering for some good old fashioned fantasy romance, this is absolutely the book for you. Cruz just gets it.

Book two is out next year, and is the finale of this duology, and honestly, after the way this book ended, I'm absolutely one hundred percent excited to witness the angst and the tears and miscommunications and forbidden romance that lies at the heart of this story. The (hopefully) happy ending will be all the more worth it.

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Where Can You Get This Book?

Right here at Bookmarks!