Main Characters: Rose, Lissa, Dimitri, Adrian, Avery

Summary:

Rose Hathaway’s life will never be the same.

The recent attack on St. Vladimir’s Academy devastated the entire Moroi world. Many are dead. And, for the few victims carried off by Strigoi, their fates are even worse. A rare tattoo now adorns Rose’s neck, a mark that says she’s killed far too many Strigoi to count. But only one victim matters . . . Dimitri Belikov. Rose must now choose one of two very different paths: honoring her life’s vow to protect Lissa—her best friend and the last surviving Dragomir princess—or, dropping out of the Academy to strike out on her own and hunt down the man she loves. She’ll have to go to the ends of the earth to find Dimitri and keep the promise he begged her to make. But the question is, when the time comes, will he want to be saved?

Now, with everything at stake—and worlds away from St. Vladimir’s and her unguarded, vulnerable, and newly rebellious best friend—can Rose find the strength to destroy Dimitri? Or, will she sacrifice herself for a chance at eternal love?

Anna’s Thoughts:

There was SO much potential in this book, so many directions this story could have taken, and yet I feel like someone stuck me on a merry-go-round. For a book with so much happening in it, very little actually happened. I am disappointed to say the least.

There is very little that we learn in Blood Promise. We get insight into Dimitri’s family, as well as a small glimpse into the fact that there are more Spirit capable Moroi, and of course the possibility that a Spirit Moroi MIGHT be able to heal the evil blood sucking crazy out of a Strigoi. Which, at this point, pretty much everyone had guessed that’s what this book would be about anyway. We also get a little more insight on Adrian and just how much he cares about Rose, and at this point I’m voting on Adrian, honestly. But that’s pretty much all this book is useful for. It’s so much filler it drives me insane.

I did in fact, manage to read it in all of six hours, however, that was purely me wanting to know what was going to happen. I mean there had to be some action in there somewhere, right? Ehh… There was, but it was very little, and in fact, very little means: almost none. There were maybe two or three fight scenes throughout the entire book that were actually worth calling ‘fight scenes.’

Also, we can’t forget about Lissa? Right? Blood Promise doesn’t manage to exclude her, she’s well within our grasp, but it’s sort of loosely tied together with the rest of the story. First of all, Rose just ‘pops in’ on her through out the book. Like.. oh say, while sitting out on a curb… where a Strigoi could pop up on her at any time… not too smart right? But, back to Lissa – I get that she’s the last in her family, the last in her line, but oh my goodness. Could we try not to kill her for once? Most of the book seems like a big ploy to get Rose away from the Academy just long enough for someone to try and kill her again. Except this time Rose has to think of another way to save her since she’s not actually at the Academy – and while, I’ll admit this was interestingly done – still it’s grasping at straws and was slightly confusing.

Also, apparently Dimitri is not just a Strigoi, he is a cat-Strigoi, because at this point I’m quite convinced he very well may have nine lives. And just think we’re only through.. three of them?

There is so much that I want to mention but it would give away a great deal of the plot, perhaps I will write another post about it specifically that isn’t included in the reviews. But, Blood Promise? A Merry-go-round. We are right back at the same place we left off in Shadow Kiss: What’s going to happen with Dimitri? Except now there might be a way to SAVE Dimitri… which… couldn’t Richelle had just put that in Shadow Kiss somewhere? As I said before, most people had figured out that this is what Blood Promise was going to be about anyway! It would not have been that hard to include it, and would have made a perfect cliffhanger. 500 pages for one new development seems like a bit of a stretch for me. Blood Promise, to me, felt like the Jacob chapters in Breaking Dawn. Entertaining but mainly just useless. Unless of course you like to know every little thing about a character. In that case, you’ll probably love it. Me, myself, I could go for a little mystery.