Falling for February #2

For my February feature, I decided to focus on the holiday EVERYBODY cares about during this month - Valentine's Day! Every Saturday I'll pick one book or series, that, no matter how trashy, really put me in the Valentine's Day mood. And this week's choice is...

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (Amazon/IndieBound).  Before I start talking about the actual book, something must be said: This is one of the WORST YA covers I have.  Ever.  Seen.  I was lent books 1-3 by a friend, and I honestly did not want to be seen in public with them, which was hard, because I couldn't stop reading them!  Moving on, did I mention I couldn't stop reading them?  Wow.  For vampire books, which I generally hate (with the exception of Scott Westerfeld's hilarious Peeps, which probably doesn't count), these were pretty darn good. 

Sassy, smoldering, and surprisingly *deep*.  I especially liked the moral dilemmas between Moroi, Strigoi, and Dhampir, which kind of helped me to ignore that creepy crawly imagining that I can feel my IQ dropping every time I read a novel with a cover this laughably bad.  And Dimitri, Mason, and Christian were all three amazingly, incredibly, YA valentine worthy.  There was definitely some sloppy writing going on here, but in February, I don't really care.

Happy Valentine's Day weekend!  :-)