I will not be reviewing this one. I am aware that there was offensive language found in it and I did not want to read this one because of it. Thank you for giving me the chance, but I'd rather not.

I was having fun with this romance and was super excited about the comparison to Vampire Academy. When I started reading it I could see this comparison and how it would focus on class dynamics. I thought okay this is great! However, as I kept reading I felt exceedingly more and more uncomfortable with the events of the book. I could not pinpoint why and found myself putting the book down and reading something else. After a few days, I came to the conclusion that I was not satisfied with the main character. Kat comes from a poor family and attends this prestigious and elitist private vampire school. She is constantly reminding the reader of her economic background, which got annoying pretty fast. I guess it made sense because she was obsessed with status. Another thing that disliked about Kat was how performative she was. It felt as if she was checking off boxes to get “woke” points. She would ask questions about the diversity in school, but wouldn’t actually do something. She was more interested in how to learn to use her privilege to get her ahead. Also, I just found her POV insufferable because ALL she cared about was status. It was all she talked about and constantly complained. Any characters of color in this narrative are painted as villains or erased from the narrative. There is one particular instance of a colonizer being excused, which was horrible. This book was a massive disappointment and would not recommend it.

Review posted on Goodreads (March 31, 2022)
Review linked.

I am personally taking down my review because, due to my white privilege, I did not see the issues that this book had within it. I recommend looking at own-voice reviews that discuss the issues within the book and I apologize for my part in promoting it and not seeing the issues.

Personally I really enjoyed this one. I think the point of this book was to show Kat battling through the prejudiced stereotypes that many are surrounded by. Showing her battling within herself of standing up for what she knows is right and her need to appease an authoritative figure she looked up to.

In my honest opinion, Kat was developed greatly as a character in her situation/surroundings. Was it as thorough as it could’ve been? No. Was there a distinct line between what was wrong and what wasn’t? No. But I think that’s the point. Showing, instead of telling in a sense.

For the age group it’s geared towards I think it’s written really well with the topics/concepts it wanted to portray- HOWEVER I am neither Jewish nor a sensitivity reader so I don’t think my opinion counts in this case. If other readers are saying this book is problematic and promoting racist stereotypes then I am 100% going to say trust what they’re saying.

DNF for the glorification of colonialism and a performative white savior/ally plotline that just was not it

I read this book prior to being made aware of the problematic issues other reviewers have rightly pointed out. At the beginning I was very excited because the MC is from Sacramento and works in EDH and I am in the Sacramento area. And while I thought the description of the country club in El Dorado Hills was probably pretty accurate, I found myself wondering what school Kat went to in Sac that was as woke as she made it sound. In my experience, Sacramento is not nearly as progressive as the book describes. But that's the least of the issues here.

Kat, as I mentioned is super woke. But it comes across as white saviorism rather than allyship. She bemoans the lack of diversity at her new school's campus, but does nothing to try to change the status quo or, indeed, to befriend the students of color who are there. She asks for the pronouns of the only openly gay character at the school, but doesn't ask for pronouns for anyone else.

I was listening to the audiobook on 2x speed while multitasking, so I somehow missed the reference to the British East India Company being "not as bad as it sounds." But when I read about it in another review... Ick. I'll let other own voices reviewers speak to the problems that raises, as well as the anti-Semitism and internalized homophobia that run rampant in this book.

The mystery surrounding the disease and search for the cure were fine I guess.

Thank you to Penguin Teen and Net Galley for the complimentary review copy of this book, but I'm afraid I won't be promoting it on my social media.

Well this one was a lot of fun! Kat Transfers to an elite academy (for vampires) where she ends up sharing a room with former friend Taylor. The pair put aside their differences to solve some mysteries and things the higher-ups are covering up. This was fun and I'm so glad it was diverse and fun!

Fun and adventurous - Youngblood takes off running, setting you immediately inside of a different world where vampire teens can attempt to hide in plain sight. This is a good recommendation for queer teens searching for something more drama-filled than romantic.

My book club picked this as our August read and I was so excited to finally have a book handy to get a jump start on reading. Vampires? Check. Boarding schools? Check. I stayed up late reading this and got about 25% in before I started falling asleep, NOT because of the book, but because it was 2am. I was loving this one.

Until I wasn't.

I think the author tried to be so inclusive of everyone that she missed quality and went for quantity. And not only did she miss the quality of the remarks but she made some pretty messed up microaggressive comments with racism thrown in. In the end it was Kate, the MC, being the white girl with the savior complex. Don't do that. Don't ever do that.

Makes me wonder who edited this book and didn't catch onto the NUMEROUS issues this book has.

I will read anything with vampires and boarding schools because those are two of my favorite things. I overall enjoyed this one but have a few gripes. 1- Kat is almost overly good to the point of annoyance. 2- All the action is in the last 25% and I feel like the pacing could have been better. 3- There is some problematic aspects with the queer rep which I would recommend looking at OV reviews before reading this one.

there is actually too many problematic aspects of this book to unpack oml. the woke white main character made me mad the entire novel and i just could not get through it after i heard about everything else included in this.

thank you to Netgalley and Penguin teen for an arc in exchange for my honest review.

DNF @25%

I saw some 1 star reviews before I started this book and based on the information in them, I didn't think this novel would be for me. I still wanted to give it a fair shot, and I want to give it the props that the idea is good. However, when your novel focuses on racist and homophobic statements to cause "conflict" or just show how "cool" your MC is, you need to reevaluate that. There would have been plenty of "issues" for the MC to focus on without those comments. And also the MC isn't likable. As a reader, it's hard for me to connect with an MC who doesn't have any flaws.

It's a pass from me.

This was quite juvenile and I could not just follow along especially in the beginning. It did not hold my attention unfortunately.

Youngblood by Sasha Laurens; Razorbill, 416 pages ($19.99). Ages 14 to 17.

Sasha Laurens, author of YA fantasy "A Wicked Magic," offers political intrigue, a murder mystery and pointed commentary on class privilege and homophobia in this engaging queer romance set in an elite boarding school for vampires.

Her vampires inhabit a world ravaged for the past 20 years by a new virus known as CFaD, "clotting factor disorder" that has infected more than half the human population. Vampires who feed on infected humans die instantly; only the creation of an expensive commercial blood substitute known as Hema has saved vampires from extinction.

High school junior Katherine "Kat" Finn is a Youngblood, one of a generation of vampires who were born, not turned. She and her vampire mother have always lived among humans, scraping by financially and barely able to afford the Hema they need to stay alive. Kat has always hidden her vampire nature – and her Hema diet – from her human friends at public school but, against her mother's wishes, applies for and wins admission to the exclusive Harcote School for vampires. Tired of being poor, Kat sees Harcote as a way to achieve "safety, stability, a life where I'd never worry about accidentally committing a murder-suicide if my bank account ran too low."

The scheming of a wealthy classmate makes Kat roommates with Taylor Granger, the "gay weirdo" at Harcote and Kat's former closest friend. The brilliant, funny narrative voice alternates between Kat and Taylor, as the two navigate old betrayals amid boarding school intrigue as a forbidden reunionist movement promotes the revolutionary idea that vampires and humans can coexist.

Will not be reading or reviewing due to racist and pro-colonization content as mentioned by many reviewers. But thank you to the publishing company for the ARC!

We all love a badass teenage vampire story, and Youngblood was amazing! We don't really see enough queer vampire books. so when I had the chance to read this before its release date, I was thanking my lucky stars! Please give this book a chance!

This was a good read. The slow burn romance was really sweet and it had me screaming at the MCs multiple times to just shut up and kiss already. The queer representation was nice in this book--I think more books could use some queer rep--however I could've gone without the homophobic remarks and teasing of the love interest. There were weird racial undertones in this book, which I think would've been normal, considering that some characters in this book have parents who lived through the Civil War... but I think that topic could've been handled a little better. It felt like the MC was trying to act as "woke" as possible and it came off more annoying than allyship. I wish the author would've explored this virus/epidemic that made vampires be very selective when it came to their prey, or meal. It could've been a bigger part of the book, but it was touched on a bit and then kind of disregarded when the MC got to the boarding school. I enjoyed the romance more than the plot, I don't know if I'd read this again.

Kat Finn is desperate to avoid spending eternity living hand to mouth, barely able to afford the blood replacement, Hema, that all vampires need to survive in a world where most humans have contracted a virus immediately fatal to vampire kind. The extremely expensive blood replacement all vampires need to survive. She knows there is only one way out, the Harcote School, a prestigious academy exclusively for the ever living, never dying and Kat’s entry point into vampire society and a more stable future. Her mother disapproves of it, says they do not need vampirdom, but Kat has been accepted and this might be her only chance. Taylor Sanger cannot wait to escape Harcote. Two more years and she can leave it and preening self-important Youngbloods it houses behind, can escape upper class vampire society and its obsession with the past, can find a place where being out and proud won’t leave her an outcast among her peers. She knows that her roommate is going to be a nightmare, but she does not expect the nightmare to change shape, for a surprise change to leave her face to face with her child hood best friend. She could never have expected to see Katherine Finn at Harcote after all these years. As the two former friends do their best to adjust, one to a new world and the other to complicated feelings, something dark simmers under the surface of Harcote. A conspiracy that could swallow the Youngblood generation or change the face of vampirdom forever.

Youngblood is a fascinating book for me, Sasha Lauren’s introduces this world that heavily mirrors our own with Kat, our raised among humans protagonist, being adrift in vampire society and unaware of the expectations her fellow students have grown up with, the things that have been normalized for them, and their approach to humans. She comes across as someone playing a game that they have only vaguely heard of but do not know the rules completely, she blends in as best she can, but has a very normal human out look as compared to the other Youngbloods who barely give humanity a thought beyond occasional flirtations with predation. It is a contrast of someone who wants to improve her situation but who also cares deeply for others versus a whole school of those who have been brought up being told they were better than humans with nearly anything they could want easily available. And then it lets the cracks start to show.

This is a book that moves slowly, that takes its time to set up characters and view points and to let those marinate in the reader’s mind. Sometimes it can feel way too slow, lingering on Taylor’s frustrations over her fellow students and her doubts that she could be anyone brave enough or reliable enough to change her situation or to be as good as Kontos, the only other gay vampire she is aware of as well as functionally her only friend at Harcote, believes she could be. That can feel painfully repetitive at points, especially given how long the book takes to get to the conspiracy from the blurb. But then, Youngblood does not feel like it is so much about the conspiracy as it is about the characters.

It's about Kat and Taylor going from mutually hurt and unwilling to trust each other to rebuilding their friendship and being able to rely on each other and themselves. It’s about Taylor feeling alone in all of Harcote and how that leads to her reliance and unsureness of her friendship with Kontos and how that leads to her clinging to the toxic pseudo relationship she had with Evangeline. About Kat slowly realizing that she’s not into the school’s heart throb, Galen, and her frustration at him needing her to be his guide into being at all socially conscious. It’s about Radtke being so much more than just Taylor’s antagonist and Evangeline becoming more three dimensional as a high school mean girl and Galen realizing that humans are people and that he can do more than just live to his family’s expectations. There are a lot of characters that exist to make a point, Lucy the influencer who is willing to use her fans for her own fun regardless of the danger to them, the twins whose family “lost it all” in the Civil War, but even those characters are used well to get a point across about vampirdom and just how backwards it is by default, how much it needs to change. It also has the best reveal of an antagonist as a protagonist I can remember.

I was, I admit, frustrated by how long Youngblood took to get to the conspiracy. It was long enough in that I started bracing myself for the sequel reveal, but then the reveal happens and everything starts to fall into place as the characters take what they have learned and build on it under pressure. It winds up being an ending that would not have been nearly as good if it had not been for the wait and the development. It leaves me really looking forward to what Laurens will do in the future, and I feel like I should probably see about finding a copy of her previous book as well. Youngblood gets a four out of five from me, decidedly worth the read.

In a world where vampires can't feed on humans for fear of death due to the vampire-killing virus, Youngbloods are naturally born vampires and the hope of the future for vampire society. This fun teen vampire story is part mystery, part coming of age, part coming out, and part romance, all at an exclusive high society academy. I loved it.

The the idea of the book because of the vampire aspect but was super let down with the homophobia and the way the main character was made to seem like the white savior. She was the only woke person and I just feel like this book would be very offensive to certain groups.