The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead | Rating: ★★★★★

"Don’t take the high ground and assume you already know what you’ll do. The truth is, when it comes to someone you love, you’ll find there isn’t anything you won’t do."

The Fiery Heart, the fourth and fittingly fiery installment of the wildly popular Bloodlines series, spin-off to Vampire Academy, takes on a different tone than its predecessors. It’s refreshing. Darker. Edgier. Sexier. After finishing it, in just over one sitting, I found that it’s my favorite in the series thus far–in spite of the heartbreaking finale that leaves us with one question in the form of a cliffhanger.

But we’ll get to that soon. Richelle Mead kicks things up a notch this round and we see even more growth in Sydney Sage. Sydney has grown to be one of my favorite characters in many, many years, and is perhaps one of Mead’s finest developed in all the novels she’s produced.

Sydney Sage is a phenomenal lead character. She’s everything one could hope for in fiction. I love how we’ve seen her go from isolated and cold to something far more superior and warm. There’s just something incredibly pleasing to look at her in this installment and to look back at her first introduction in the Vampire Academy series.