Customer Reviews

Blue Bloods

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(63)
3 star:		(59)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I picked up this book suspecting to be an unconventional, interesting vampire tale. I am a fan of vampire lore, or good ones, at least, so I had to pick this up at my friendly local library. Was I surprised - or perhaps not, coming from the author of 'Au Pairs'- that this book had very little to do with vampires. The first 100 or so pages had absolutely no vampire mentions, and hardly any insinuations that vampires would come up later. Even after that the whole 'Guess what, I'm a vampire, and nearly everyone around you is too...oh yeah, and blood is indeed a necessity' thing is merely a side plot. Mainly, this book concerns Schuyler, an outcast of sorts, dealing with the Queen Bee, Mimi Force, and her gorgeous twin brother, and other high school dramas such as that. It takes a look at the high end of society, where teens learn to drip money without showing it off. Schuyler later learns that she is a 'blue blood', or a very special vampire who is descended from a very old line. You do not learn of this until you're 15, and then signs of it come to your attention, like visible veins and a raw meat craving. Those who are blue bloods seem to be always rich. This exclusive group seems to be HIGHLY metaphorical to the upper-class. She is told that she is immortal, yet blue bloods seem to be dying very rapidly...
Quite frankly, if the whole vampire thing got chucked out, a good percentage would still be a solid story. I was a bit disappointed at first, due to the lack of vampirism, but it was still a good read. Do not read this if you're looking for an Anne Rice twist for teens, or something to that effect. If you are a fan of Ms. de la Cruz's previous novels, i.e, the Au Pairs, and other chick lit, you will find this book a very good one.

This is one of the best teenage vampire books out there, a fantastic read for teens and adults alike. Schuyler Van Alen lives alone with her grandma, and has only two friends: Oliver and Dylan. However, she begins experiencing strange things, like the intricate, raised pattern of blue veins on her arms. When she is invited to join the New York Blood Bank Committee, the most prestigous charity group in the city, she is reluctant. She attends the first meeting at her grandmother's insistence, where she is informed that she, as well as all the other Committee members, is a Blue Blood, an ancient breed of vampires. She is also informed that she is immortal and cannot be killed. If that's true, why are there three vampire teens who have recently been found dead? Schuyler begins a race against time to find out what could be killing vampires, as well as some shocking facts about her heritage and that of her friends, fellow vampires, and family. Will Schuyler find out what is happening...or will she be killed herself? Blue Bloods is an excellent book, the wonderful descriptions and storyline totally suck you in. I recommend this book for anyone, and can't wait for the sequels!

I have recently gotten into YA vampire literature, and after seeing this book as a recommendation on Amazon, I decided to give it a try.

What a waste.

The book jumps around so much, that it is utterly impossible to get to know (or like) any of the characters. One minute the book focuses on Schuyler, then Bliss, then Jack, then Mimi... You end up not being able to get a true sense of who any of the characters actually are. This is most predominant with Schuyler. In the beginning of the book, you are led to believe that she is a shy-loaner type that doesn't fit in. All of a sudden, she is outgoing (the model thing....what was up with that?!?) and gets this "take-charge" attitude that comes out of no-where. I thought that maybe her relationship with Jack would salvage some of the story, but even that was extremely choppy, and unbelievable. There was no development in the relationship and it mostly left me confused.

The book tries to get way too in-depth into the history of vampires - on the most superficial level, if that makes sense? Its like new layers of who vampires are and how they came about kept getting introduced into the story, but they were never fully explained. It's seemed like the author wanted the history of her vampires to be very complicated, but in the end they just came out confusing.

I found myself skipping pages of jibberish to try and get to end of the story where other reviewers said that the book finally got interesting and redeemed itself. The last couple of pages were *decent*, but certainly not enough to make me want to jump up and get the sequel (even after the enormous cliff-hanger that I was left with).

And (on a final note) I could really care less about what designer shoes and skirts each character was wearing. Maybe it's because I don't follow fashion very closely, but all of the descriptions about the designers each character was wearing were completely lost on me and made the book even less enjoyable to read.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm in no way qualified to define what a "good book" is. No one can claim that right. Everyone will have to decide for themselves whether De La Cruz's work is their style. All I know is the feeling I got from reading "Blue Bloods". It was not something I expected, and I can only describe it as isolation. I am a fairly average working class young woman. I've always liked books where there is at least one character who faces, even in a fantasy context, the same kinds of problems that I occasionally do (money troubles, cruel superiors etc.). I've never perceived the extremely rich as having real problems. There is always money to cushion the blow, so that even if (for example) their child gets a horrible cancer the child will still be exponentially more likely to survive than the child on my economic level who gets the same illness, simply because the rich child will have parents who can afford the endless medical treatment and will never have to deal with insurance issues.

First of all, De La Cruz has created a race of vampires who are continuously reincarnated (rather like Tolkien's Elves), and who were originally fallen angels. Not only are her vampires not "made" by other vampires, but they were never human to begin with! That alone makes me feel a bit put off. Where's the fun in a vampire story if you can't imagine the risk of becoming a part of this vampire community yourself?

The second problem lies in the fact that all of her vampires come from Old Money American pedigrees (one of them is even revealed to be Miles Standish and the Archangel Michael all rolled up into one neat package). They are not merely "rich", they are "obscenely rich". As a working class girl, I will never be even remotely part of this world. The habits of obscenely rich people are so alien to me that I find myself unable to relate to them. In fact, when you have a heroine in a story who is in a similar life situation to myself, the people that are like De La Cruz's vampires are usually her antagonists! Now, I know that De La Cruz is a fashion expert and has written for many fashion mags. This seems to be why she goes out of her way to mention so much detailed fashion and pop-culture information. I've sometimes noticed this from writers who have successful non-writing careers. Robin Cook sometimes does the same thing with medical facts. I find this excessive pop-culture trivia distracting. I will never be able to afford these brand name clothes and so I don't know much about them and see no reason to find out. I don't see why De La Cruz needs to say that the character is wearing jeans by this designer and bought them at this specific boutique on this specific street in Manhattan. All she needs to say is the character is wearing expensive designer jeans and I'll get the picture. I have to admit, it sometimes sounds like she's showing off her knowledge as opposed to furthering the plot.

It's possible this has something to do with the difference between "vampire stories" and the "chick-lit" stories that De La Cruz is chiefly known for (ex. her Au Pair series). People expect different things from different genres. I rarely read chick-lit. I read "Blue Bloods" because it's a vampire story. I expected the kind of atmosphere that is generally invoked in a vampire story. Instead, I got the atmosphere of a chick-lit novel. It felt very odd. I'm now halfway convinced that the two should not be mixed, except in a comedic context. De La Cruz writes this book as if she's unaware that she's straying into a completely different genre, and there are going to be people (i.e fans of vampire stories) reading her novel that are going to expect completely different things than what she's used to (i.e fans of chick-lit). It's very tricky for a writer to successfully cross genres and I don't think that she did it very well.

This is, I am more than willing to admit, a personal view and should in no way deter anyone from at least trying this writer out. I believe every writer should be experienced first hand before someone makes a judgment. And De La Cruz is a fairly good story teller. It's a credit to her skill that I actually wanted to find out how the story ended, otherwise I probably would've just abandoned the book in the middle. But my desire to find out the ending was strained by the time I got to the last chapters. I just wish that she had made her characters and her fictional world more accessable to the majority of the population. It really is a shame that I couldn't get over my feelings of being shut out and enjoy the story more.

I bought this book because I expected it to be a long-awaited branching-out of Ms. de la Cruz's from teen chick-lit to something a bit more serious. Being a bit of an outcast myself I expected to sympathize with the character of Schuyler van Alen. However, while the main plotline of the story was just as shallow, if not more so, than The Au Pairs, the secondary prologue plotline was what truly disappointed me.

I am a writer. I am not published, and I'm only eighteen, but what I do a lot of in my free time is write. And when I'm not writing about made-up fantasy worlds, sometimes I actually have to do research about our own world for the book to make sense.
Ms. de la Cruz, and her editors, seem to not care about this at all. I realize that she grew up in the Phillippines and therefore the history of the Mayflower might not have been as ingrained into her childhood as it was into mine. But a bit of internet research could have prevented her from making the painful errors she made in writing this book. For example:

1. On page three, the first entry, the writer states: "it has been a difficult winter" as her opening comment. If you will notice the date on the top of the page, it is November 21st. November is not winter. Nor, as the narrator later states, have the settlers even docked yet. The difficult winter did not occur until the settlers had arrived in Plymouth.

2. About Plymouth. They spelled it `Plimoth' at the time.

3. On page 56, the second entry, the narrator writes: "... joyful news-- the people of this new land have welcomed us with open arms and many gifts. They brought us wild game, a large bird that could feed an army, a bunch of vegetables, and maize." This is supposedly the 25th of November, 1620. The Indians did not meet the Pilgrims until March 16th, 1621. The first Thanksgiving, as de la Cruz alludes to, was not celebrated until August of that year. The reason the Pilgrims suffered through their first winter was their isolation from other people, including the Indians. The narrator also states: "...we are heartened by the sight of the verdant land, the vast virgin acres." Other than the nauseatingly blatant and inept attempt at alliteration, I wonder exactly how `verdant' the `acres' could have looked in late November in Massachusetts. Interesting how de la Cruz first calls November winter, and then suddenly it's spring!

4. On page 80-- diary entry three-- the narrator states: "Today Myles Standish took a team down the coast the Roanoke to bring medicine, food, and supplies to the settlers there. It is a fortnight's sail, so they will be gone a good while." This is the thirtieth of November. Need I reiterate my previously made point about the Plymouth settlers' isolation? They would have had no contact with Roanoke. Furthermore, the Plymouth/Plimoth colonists did not have extra medicine, food or supplies, they barely had enough for themselves.
5. On pages 125 and 184, the last two diary entries, the narrator writes: "The men have been gone for days now, and still there is no word. We are frightened. They should have arrived there and returned by now, with news of the colony. But all is silent," and "Alas! Alas! Everyone from Roanoke is disappeared. Myles and the men found nothing of the colony," respectively. These entries were for December 20th and 23rd, respectively. Let's think about this, shall we? Aside from the fact that the words "Alas! Alas!" reek of something I might have written to show `emotion' in the third grade after reading too much historical fiction, the "journey to Roanoke" would take a fortnight, as stated in entry three. That means a round trip would take two fortnights. As in four weeks. November 30th-December 20th isn't even three weeks. The men should not have been back by then, nor should they have come back on December 23rd. They should have come back on December 28th.
As I said before, I am eighteen. My elementary school teachers drilled the story of the pilgrims into us from a very young age. I am surprised, after reading the reviews by everyone else on here, that no one else picked up on this very crucial fact.
How do I catch things that published authors and paid editors do not? Are the powers that be at Hyperion all exceptionally bad at American History, or have they let Ms. de la Cruz get away with shoddy writing and fact-checking simply because they know the success of her earlier Au Pairs books would lead to millions buying this book (followed by the continued dumbing-down of American teenagers)? That they would let something so blatantly wrong onto bookshelves astounds me. Most authors know to do research before writing-- in fact, most high schoolers do-- and this was a slap in all of our faces.
I already wrote all of this in a letter to Hyperion asking them to revise or recall the book, but like the ostriches they are, they have done nothing to this effect.
People! Don't accept this sort of shoddily-written tripe! Look at what I have to say and don't hesitate to follow me in petitioning Hyperion and Ms. de la Cruz!

this was a great book...it is like the twilight books but it has it's own twist....it's not as good as the twilight series but it is right up there

Despite the fact the author seemed to give up on the last 5 chapters, and hurried the book to an odd conclusion, this still proved a fun book. The concepts behind the plot were facsinating. The fashion world as vampires? Of course! Why didn't I think of that! The explantion for the disappearance of the colony of Roanoke was very unique. As an adult reader of YA literature, I'm always on the look out for something that will tempt a reluctant reader. This will do the trick.

Though I loved the concept of this book, and the storyline---I'm not huge on the writing style. I felt that even by the end of the book, the author never really gave me a chance to create get an attachment to any of the characters. They were just pawns in the story line rather then anything else.

Again--great storyline and I like where it was heading, but I perfer a more character driven book.

I suppose Melissa de la Cruz should get credit for combining two popular teen genres: high society chick-lit and urban vampires. Unfortunately, this means we are subjected to endless descriptions of designer brands and the lifestyle of the super-rich as well as convoluted pseudo-historical back-story. But even this would be endurable if the characters were interesting or at least, well-constructed.

Schuyler Van Alen, the protagonist, is ostensibly a loner who doesn't go in for the conspicuous consumerism and cliques of her prep-school classmates. But the characterization is pasted on rather than shown in any meaningful way, and an outsider heroine doesn't keep the author from devoting most of the novel to descriptions of parties and "Mean Girls" tactics. In the end, we have to supply Schuyler as a bookish loner-type stereotype because de la Cruz clearly intends that, even as she has failed to portray it at all convincingly.

Furthermore, the writing is poor. There are periodic howlers: a lunch of strawberries and cream is described as "nutritiously deficient," and clear examples of poorly understood words: the decrepit mansion where Schuyler lives demonstrates her family's onetime "largesse." (I pass over de la Cruz's abysmal and embarrassingly bad attempts to incorporate Latin into her vampire culture.) The prose often has a distinctly purple tint, overburdened with descriptions of eyes, hair, clothing, and skin-tone.

In short, this book demonstrates the author to have jumped on the bandwagon of popular teen themes while lacking to ability to make them interesting.

Blue Bloods is a violent car crash of gossip girl meets the worst vampire book you have ever read. No character is likeable, it seems like an excuse to drop brands and names and fantasise about being uber rich and living in Manhattan. How many people actually live like the kids in this book do? It's obscene and if that is the way the super rich live then I am more than happy to maintain my middle class, simple, jeans-and-a-tshirt existence.
Gawd what a waste of money and time.
I suppose at 21 I might be getting too old for these books but dayum, must so many of these YA paranormal offerings being utter and unremitting s***?
It seems like if you write about hot teenage boy vampires these days, no matter how thin the plot or how unlikable the characters, you're publishable.

Blue Bloods made me grind my teeth in an effort to finish the damn thing. In my humble oppionion it is not worth anybodies money.