Book Review: Blue Bloods

TITLE: Blue Bloods
Book 1 in the Blue Bloods series
AUTHOR: Melissa De La Cruz
PUBLISHED: 2006
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: vampires, romance, drama
PREMISE: Schuylar goes to an exclusive school where she learns she and the all the rich kids are vampires called blue bloods who are being hunted.
MY REVIEW: I saved this series for last on my quest to read the major vampire books because I had a feeling I wouldn't like it very much. Turned out to be both right and wrong. I'm honestly very split on this series. The tween bopper in me that likes the cheesy stuff like Wizards of Waverly place and rom-coms and is seriously thinking of trying out the Vampire Diaries on CW sort of dug this. Was the premise and idea ridiculous? Oh yeah, baby. I'd go as far to say it's almost as a ridiculous an idea as House of Night. However, unlike House of Night I did at least find this a bit believable. There is also an ongoing mystery that I am mildly interested in and a few funny lines here and there. For it's audience (tweens who like stuff like Gossip Girl) these books are all right. Oh, and the fashion is fun.
However, that's about all the good I can find because honestly it's a ridiculous series. The names are ridiculous (there's a woman named TRINITY, okay? Plus when I find the name Cordelia normal you know it's bad), all the characters are two-dimensional and actually kind of obnoxious with the possible exception of Schuylar who is a total Mary Sue. The series on whole is a bit shallow to be honest. There is nothing really deep going on here. In fact this series is pretty much Gossip Girl combined with Vampire Diaries. I fully expect CW to pick these books up in the future to make it a teen drama. Don't get me started on the writing which have really bad prose, eighty million descriptions of fashion that were fun at first but quickly became annoying, and did I mention the names were ridiculous?
So is it utterly horrible a la House of Night? No. I mean, at least there's some resembelance of a plot going on here. I think. The author does have some interesting takes on the vampire mythos (even though I find them almost as ridiculous as the sparkling vampires of Twilight. Almost). But on the whole it's just cheesy so I can't really give it more then three stars for good guilty pleasure series. I also am not even sure if I'll continue it even though I'm mildly interested in the mystery part.
WHO SHOULD READ: younger teens, house of night fans, twilight fans, vampire diaries fans, gossip girl fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five plaid skirts