Do you remember when vampires were a real hype? Books such as Twilight and Vampire Academy were a huge success in the early 2000s. Now, in 2022, vampires seem to make a comeback. Younglood by Sasha Laurens plays part in tis revival and I was really curious for htis. Vampires at a boarding school who happen to be lesbian? Yes, please! Was this the vampire revival I was hoping for?

Title: Youngblood
Author: Sasha Laurens
Publish date: July 19, 2022
Publisher: Razorbill
ISBN: 9780593353202
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

For fans of Vampire Diaries and dark academia, two queer teen bloodsuckers at an elite vampire-only boarding school must go up against all of Vampirdom when they uncover a frightening conspiracy on campus.
Kat Finn and her mother can barely make ends meet living among humans. Like all vampires, they must drink Hema, an expensive synthetic blood substitute, to survive, as nearly all of humanity has been infected by a virus that’s fatal to vampires. Kat isn’t looking forward to an immortal life of barely scraping by, but when she learns she’s been accepted to the Harcote School, a prestigious prep school that’s secretly vampires-only, she knows her fortune is about to change.
Taylor Sanger has grown up in the wealthy vampire world, but she’s tired of its backward, conservative values—especially when it comes to sexuality, since she’s an out-and-proud lesbian. She only has to suffer through a two more years of Harcote before she’s free. But when she discovers her new roommate is Kat Finn, she’s horrified. Because she and Kat used to be best friends, a long time ago, and it didn’t end well.
When Taylor stumbles upon the dead body of a vampire, and Kat makes a shocking discovery in the school’s archives, the two realize that there are deep secrets at Harcote—secrets that link them to the most powerful figures in Vampirdom and to the synthetic blood they all rely on.

The book started of really promising. We get to know Kat who hangs out with her friends and works a lot. She needs to do that because she and her mum barely make it every month. They depend on hema, some blood substitute to prevent them from a certain infectuous disease that’s spreading over the world fast. Kat’s father has died because of this disease. Soon, we learn that Kat wants to go to Harcote, a boarding school for the best of the best of teenagers in de USA. What nobody knows is that this is an elite boarding school, exclusively for vampires. Kat secretly enrolls at this school, to her mum’s anger. When she arrives, she finds out to happen to be roomies with Taylor, her former best friend. There has been bbad blood between the two, something Laurens highlights a lot. We also get Taylor’s POV and the chapters alternate between them. Actually, POVs even change within the chapter.

However, I didn’t really like the characters. This book tries SO hard to be woke, a little bit too much for my taste. Look, I’m all for diversity and acceptance, but Kat was way too political correct to be likeable. On the other hand, Taylor helds a grudge against everyone which makes her annoying. Their characters develop towards the end, but that’s taking too long.

What’s also taking too long is for the dead vampire body to appear. Kat does her discovery in the library much earlier in the story. However, Taylor finding the body takes till around 60% into the book. This to my frustration, cause the adjusting to boarding school life and settling into the new school year has been taking forever and is not that interesting. Unfortunately, when the story was supposed to get interesting, it kept lacking. Everything felt quite rushed and still wasn’t really intriguing for me. In fact, it was actually very predictable. Moreover, the writing ffell kind of flat for me. It was clear that this book is the author’s debut. It was okay, but not the best. Definitely not the vampire revival I was eagerly awaiting.