In which I feel stupid...

Way back when I signed with my wonderful agent, Jim McCarthy, he sent me a box of some of his other clients' books.  In that box was Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead.  My editor also sent me a box of books and I arranged everything on new shelves and started reading my way through them.  My mother started to read more and more YA and when she realized just how many books I had, she started making visits to haul them away.  (Yes, I've turned my mother into a huge YA reader and it's totally awesome.)

Early on my mom carted away Vampire Academy and it lived at her house for a long while until she picked it up.  She devoured it, raced to the store and bought the entire series.  Every time she visited or we chatted on the phone, she asked when a new one would be coming out.

See, you'd think that would have been enough to prompt me to drop everything and pick these books up.  But I didn't for a whole host of boring reasons like revisions, writing, other books I had to read for whatever reason.

I even met Richelle in person and yes, I was embarrassed that here she's written this amazingly successful series (multiple series!) and we share an agent and I hadn't read her books!  I really like to be in the perfect mood for a book because I really really want to love every book I read.  And then a few weeks ago the perfect mood struck and I picked up Vampire Academy.

OH.  MY.  WORD!!!  I am SO STUPID for not having read these books earlier!!!  Seriously, they're amazing and I've been devouring them!  My mother never gave me Frostbite, the second book, and I had to race to the store to pick it up because I just couldn't wait.  I was up so early this morning reading the third that it was dark out (I don't do mornings well).

This world is just really wonderfully crafted and complex.  Richelle does a brilliant job of building the characters and the plots and raising the stakes and weaving it all together so tightly and compellingly.  There are layers and twists and depth -- these are books that have made me gasp, that have kept me up late and gotten me up early (anything that can get me awake at 5am has to be incredible).  And yes, these books have made me teary which is a massive feat all on its own.

They're also really well written.  As an author I really really love seeing how Richelle pulls it all off -- truly, I'm in awe of her mad skills.  And yes, I feel stupid for not reading them earlier but I'm super SUPER thrilled that I get to just devour them one right after the other without having to wait.

Thanks Richelle for writing such phenomenal books and I'm sorry I didn't read them earlier!  And everyone else out there who has been putting off picking up this fantastic series, I wholeheartedly recommend it!