Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz

De la Cruz has revamped traditional vampire lore in this story featuring a group of attractive, privileged Manhattan teens who attend a prestigious private school. Schuyler Van Alen, 15, the last of the line in a distinguished family, is being raised by her distant and forbidding grandmother. Schuyler, her friend Oliver, and their new friend Dylan are treated like outsiders by the clique of popular, athletic, and beautiful teens made up of Mimi Force, her twin brother, and her best friend. What they have in common is the fact that they are all Blue Bloods, or vampires. They don't realize that they aren't normal until they reach age 15. Then the symptoms manifest themselves and they begin to crave raw meat, have nightmares about events in history, and get prominent blue veins in their arms. Their immortality and way of life are threatened after Blue Blood teens start getting murdered by a splinter group called the Silver Bloods. This novel constantly name-drops and is full of product placements, drinking, drugs, nonexplicit sex, and superficial characterizations, but the intriguing plot will keep teens reading. De la Cruz's explanation for the disappearance of the Colony of Roanoke is unique and the idea that models don't gain weight because they are Blue Bloods rather than anorexic is unusual.

I can't even get past the first few chapters. The writing style is so boring - there's nothing to grab on to to keep my attention. And, who cares about stuck up snobs that happen to be bloodsuckers?

one of my co-workers is reading this series and she recommended this to me. I love Vampire/Paranormal reads this was just really slow for me

I'm torn on whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars, but I'll go with 3 for now since there were a few flaws that I felt could have made this book better.

First of all, I was (and still am) reading “City of Bones”, but that was awfully long and detailed, so I decided to take a break and read this. I'd been meaning to for years, and I had started to in the past, but I just lost interest. The problem is, the book doesn't really get into all the vampire stuff until the middle of the book. You know it's coming, though, because it's on the back of the book. I felt like it could have gotten into it a little bit earlier, especially since a few of the characters already “know”.

Second, I kept on getting confused between the characters of Schuyler and Bliss. One was an social outsider who was a vampire, and the other is a slightly-more popular yet still kinda outsider who is also a vampire. I just didn't feel like these characters - among others - were distinct enough to differentiate. The guy characters blended together for me, at times, too.

I did like how the novel approached the vampire lore with something different. I liked the high-society aspect of it and how vampires were so interwoven into New York culture. As others have said, if you liked Gossip Girl (which I kinda did) and you want vampires, this will be perfect. The writing style was very engaging, and I even learned a few new SAT words along the way.

I was disappointed how the book ended without any real resolution. They just built it up and up and nothing really got solved. I wish they would have at least tried to wrap things up instead of being an obvious “now go buy the 2nd book”. I was probably going to read it anyway, but I don't like feeling so pressured ;)

Wow, that was a seriously quick read.

So I like de la Cruz, I read another one of her YA series, the Au Pairs, back when I was in high school. This one is in the paranormal genre and is about a group of vampires that settled in America and then proceeded to regenerate themselves into different forms until we get to the main characters of this story. So, we have a couple of characters who are not at all developed, some vampire lore that is so completely different than the assumed vampire lore that its kind of ridiculous, and all of this is set in the Upper East Side of New York.

In other words it's like the vampire version of Gossip Girl or the A-List (which btw, I'm a huge fan of both series).

I don't know how I feel about the book yet. It was okay, mediocre at best. The vampire thing is really trying my patience. Must every author have a stab at it?

I have the rest of the books and I'm not one to not give a series a try (I got through Twilight...) so I'll be reading the next one.