Vampire Academy

I had kind of low expectations when I picked up this book. The combination of "vampires" and "high school" is not promising, in my opinion, despite its recent popularity. But so far it has turned out to be much better-written, with a lot less domestic abuse than the Twilight series. There's a little bit of depth (still not much, but the bar in this genre is low) to the characters, and I sense an overthrow of an oppressive system coming up, which is always a great theme in YA. I'll keep reading.

The plot and writing of this book were OK, and the audio edition was decently read. Unfortunately, I hated the main character so deeply it's utterly beyond description. I have never wanted to slap a protagonist so hard in my life! Maybe she gets less terrible in later books in the series, but I'm not willing to purchase book two in order to find out. I got the first book on sale, and I'm rather glad.