“You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.”

This is a key line in the book Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead, USA Today bestselling author and author of the Bloodlines Series. Shadow Kiss is the third book in her Vampire Academy Series, published on November 13th, 2008. The series begins with our main character and narrator, Rose Hathaway, who is a dhampir, a half vampire half human who are trained to become guardians to Moroi vampires and protect them from evil vampires called Strigoi.

This story opens with Rose preparing for her field experience with her fellow guardians. The field experience is a six week practice training before graduation. Each guardian in training is assigned a Moroi to protect and all the school guardians will pretend to be Strigoi, who used to be either dhampirs or Moroi, and attack. The guardians in training will then have to fight and “kill” them with their practice stake.

The quote above represents a very important event in the book. Rose is expecting to be paired with Vasalisa “Lissa” Dragomir, her best friend and the last remaining royal in the Dragomir line. They share a bond so Rose knows where Lissa is and knows what she’s feeling. This is called being “shadow kissed”. Rose instead gets paired with Christian Ozera, Lissa’s boyfriend and school bad boy, and she is definitely not happy about it. Frightened and tormented by the death of her friend Mason, Rose doesn’t get off to a good start in her field training and seeing Mason everywhere doesn’t help the situation any more.

With the first book being adapted into a movie coming out on Valentine’s Day 2014, many are probably saying this will be the next Twilight but trust me when I say that this is nowhere near Twilight. This series is no ordinary love story. In fact, it hardly starts out as one. This series is action packed and only gets better as the series progresses. With Rose fighting for love and trying to keep up in time to graduate, does she ever get the chance to be a normal teenager? Will she ever get time to herself? Not if she plans on being Lissa’s guardian and protecting her from Strigoi at all times.

I will say that when I started the series, I instantly fell in love with these books. The books will captivate you from the very beginning and it only gets better the farther into the series you get. I have read the first three books in the series and it is very hard to pick a favorite. I love them all and I cannot wait to find out what other surprises the author throws into the series. If you are a fan of vampires, fantasy and action, you need to go read this series.

Shadow Kiss was published by Razorbill Publishing Company and a paperback copy is $8.99 at Barnes and Noble and it is also available as an eBook.