target acquired

Dear Vampire Diary,

wait, why did I write that? "vampire" diary? maybe cause everything in my life is vampire, vampire, vampire! best friend vampire. training to protect vampires. actually protecting vampires. I'm half-vampire. I go to a Vampire Academy for chrissakes. vampires, vampires, everywhere. and now apparently I have a vampire diary too. hello, unconscious. argh! ok enough of this bs, I'm getting annoyed and need to work it out by working out. maybe this diary thing isn't going to work out. I wish I could talk to Dimitri instead.

Rose

❁

Dear Vampire Diary,

ok, let's try this again. just came back from a great workout with Dimitri and I need someplace to vent. hello, diary. I'm not really a diary sort of girl, whatever that even means. that's probably more of a vampire type thing, thinking about life, deep thoughts, writing it down, all that. deep. deep and not exciting. but I need someplace to put all these dimitris thoughts. whoah! ok, I guess I need someplace to put all my thoughts about Dimitri. those eyes! that voice! the body! shoulder length hair! now I know that shoulder length hair on guys is a total romantic cliché but whatever. I love that shoulder length hair. oh, Dimitri! Dimitri. ok, enough about Dimitri. I should talk about more important things like my training and my best friend Lissa and all the plots swirling around her and stupid school cliques and my hectic schedule and what I learned in dimitri today. what I learned in class today! it was something about - uh - hmmm - I don't know. honestly I was thinking about Dimitri the whole time. ok I think I need to take care of some business here because I'm feeling sorta frustrated and I can't get Dimitri out of my dimitri.

Rose

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Dear Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead,

there, that feels better. who needs a stupid diary when I can just write to the story of my so-called life. it's not like anyone's going to read this, they can just read the book. so anyway... I want to thank you, Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. you really got it right. sure you put a lot in about Dimitri and his hair but all that stuff really wasn't the point and you know that. first of all, I want to say how much I just plain LIKED the story you made of my life. it was fun to read! and exciting. you kept some of the boring parts, sure, whose life is all excitement, but mainly it was fun from beginning to end.

ok, that's all I want to say about the fun. you made it fun, thank you, but fun is not everything. what really counts for me is that you did not gloss over the things that were uncomfortable and deep and sometimes even ugly.

you got the addictive part right, the blood sucking, how it is like a drug or like sex and how much I want to do that drug-sex thing (or actually how much I want Lissa to do it to me). and getting bitten feels so good, so incredible, damn how it makes me feel! but I can't admit it. I don't want to admit it to myself and I especially don't want to admit how much I like it to other people, they'll think I'm some junkie or some slut or whatever, and if I think too hard about it, I'll probably think the same thing about myself. so yeah, you got that right, Vampire Academy. the self-loathing that comes with feeling good about doing something bad. but is it so bad? I like how you left that ambiguous.

you left Lissa's cutting in. I love you for that. you made sense of the cutting and why she did it. you didn't dismiss it, didn't shy away from it, and you didn't make it pathetic. you made your readers understand cutting in an honest and real way.

here's another thing you got right: my pettiness and my hypocrisy. I used the same disgusting tactics of gossip and shaming - both slut-shaming and shaming around status & class - on the people who used it on me. you didn't leave that out. you didn't excuse it. you showed how I was sometimes just as bad as the villains in the book. you didn't justify how low Lissa and I went in trying to defend ourselves, how we became just as terrible as the people who were tormenting us. that was hard for me to read. and it was important for me to read too.

but the most important thing you got right was the central relationship. you are not about me and my thing for Dimitri. you are about friendship between women. you are about two best friends, me and Lissa, everything else is secondary. that's the point of your whole story. sisterhood! that feels corny to write but whatever. it's true. your story is moving because it is about how girls can bond and protect each other and hurt together and move forward together. how they can understand each other. thank you for getting all of that right.

so in case you're wondering, I gave you 3 stars instead of 4 and that's because the writing was kinda bland and the second half got a little bogged down in DimitriDimitriDimitri. but so what! nobody's perfect (except Dimitri). I will still read your sequels.

Rose

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Dear mark monday,

Stop pretending to be Rose.

Richelle Mead