Books, Boots and Bakeries

I was in Canty’s Bookshop on the weekend doing what I do best there. Lurking by the YA shelves, earwigging on good book chat and pretending I am not wanting to buy the same series for the third time, but with different covers. A girl near me was in full flight about her sexual awakening and Dimitri. Then she said the movie broke her heart because the MMC looks like a potato. I snorted. Could not help it. Next thing I am stickybeaking and we are all laughing like we are back in high school with dog eared paperbacks and zero chill. I don’t think you ever get too old to make friends at bookstores.

Technically I was by the cookbooks which is always dangerous territory for me. And technically the only thing I bought was a cookbook that I may have to blog about later because she is gorgeous. But Canty’s does that. You go in for recipes and come out reminiscing about your teenage crush on a fictional Russian vampire guardian.

Vampire Academy was a moment for me. As a young adult I devoured those books. We all wanted to be Rose. Sharp tongue. Feral loyalty. A bit reckless. Fighting the good fight and falling hard in the worst possible places. There is something about the way Richelle Mead wrote that made the school the politics and the friendships feel big without losing the silly little bits that make teen life sing. Rose and Lissa had that ride or die energy that made you want to text your best mate and say thanks for sticking around when I was a brat at fifteen.

And Dimitri. Lord help me. The long coat. The quiet eyes. The training scenes that had no business being that charged. The movie tried to bottle that and it sadly just did’nt land. I get what they were going for but the tone was off. I’d say it was just me, but they only made the one movie of the series, so clearly it wasn’t. It is hard to translate banter tension and a heroine who carries the whole story on her shoulders. On the page Rose is a force. On screen she became a punchline. I still wish they had leaned into the grit and let the romance burn slow instead of trying to wink at the audience. Also it was about the time of the Hunger Games. It may have just been too much.

A girlfriend got me into the series back in the day. She handed me book one and said trust me. I did. Then I blinked and somehow I loved Bloodlines even more. Adrian wrecked me in the best way and Sydney felt like the grown up answer to what happens after school when your choices start to follow you around. The world got wider. The stakes felt clever rather than bigger for the sake of it. I remember finishing one of the Bloodlines books at 2 am and lying there wired thinking about the difference between loving someone and choosing them.

Standing in Canty’s I realised how long it has been since I last read these. So I went home and cracked open book one. Just a few chapters to see if it still had me. It does. The voice pops straight away. Rose is still funny. Lissa is still fragile and fierce. Dimitri walks on and I am sixteen again with a crush the size of Russia. The politics make more sense now that I am older. The themes hit harder. Loyalty. Consent. Power. Consequence. It is all still there tucked between snarky one liners and training montages.

So here is my plan. I am going to keep going. I will ride the nostalgia wave through Vampire Academy then dip back into Bloodlines for my Adrian fix. I will forgive the potato casting keep my rose tinted glasses for the text where they belong and let teenage me have her moment. (Hello lovely woman I met at the bookstore!!!) If you see me at Canty’s hovering near the counter with a stack I absolutely do not need, please mind your business. Or better yet come say hi and tell me which book character awakened your questionable taste. If it is Dimitri I promise I will not judge. Much.

Vampire Academy is a teen coming of age ride that still holds up. Big feelings, messy friendships, first love, and the kind of loyalty that makes you brave. It is pacey, funny, and sharper than you remember. If you missed it as a teen, read it now. If you loved it back then, it is worth a revisit. I’m about 4 chapters back in, and already it’s fun!!