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.

Youngblood was an exciting but cute YA rom-com set at a vampire boarding school where not all is as it seems. I really enjoyed the storyline and the characters as they discovered more about who they are and what matters to them. Taylor and Kat complimented each other so well and I was so glad when they finally realized they were what each other needed all along! The only downsides to this book was that it was a bit repetitive regarding Taylor and Kat's inner monologues. I felt like we were going over the same thing in each chapter before they realized what was going on/what they were feeling. The ending was honestly predictable but it was still enjoyable to read. I think it would've been easy to get through with fewer pages though. Otherwise, this book was great! Go Harcote!

*thank you penguin Randomhouse for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review*

Kat is one of the first generation Born Vampires but doesn’t have the luxury of being a part of the up and coming vampire community like she yearns for. Everything changes when she gets accepted and offered a full ride to the ever exclusive Harvote - the first and only Private Vampire Institute.

Taylor is starting junior year at Harcote with the same old same old issues of hating everyone there. When her roommate suddenly changes and she’s rooming with the new girl, it’s a shock. Not only childhood best friends, Kat Finn broke her first crushing heart and then disappeared without a trace years ago. And now they’re stuck together.

This story was so fun. I loved the private dorm school setting and the different take on Vampires that can be born. The mystery and suspense was fun and the sapphic relationship focus was so much fun. I had a great time reading this one and will definitely pick up from Sasha when she writes another.

I enjoyed this queer vampire friends to lovers, boarding school, murder mystery story but it fell a bit flat for me. It highlights a bunch of issues that are relevant to today's world and tons of high school drama. I did enjoy following Kat and her self discovery, learning to be who she truly was and not who she thought she was supposed to be.

I did notice there was quite a bit of uneven pacing throughout the story. Some areas dragged a bit while others felt completely rushed. Everything gets tied up in the last 50 pages of the book, which part of that was more of a "what happened afterwards".

I won’t be reading this book. This book is full of racist and problematic passages that have been highlighted by BIPOC on Goodreads and storygraph.

I think maybe—like Kat and Galen—I wanted to like this more than I did. The writing it quite readable. (I had an ARC, so I can't comment on editing.) The idea is interesting, the self-discovery aspect seemed well done, and the characters had potential. But, in the end, neither was particularly likeable, the romance is put off too long to feel satisfying, and there's just a whole subtle sense of ick to the story.

Part of the discomfort is in the blatant -isms of the vampires. And I'll accept that people raised in eras past might carry some of the attitudes of that past with them. But a lot of it is just baked into the narrative and apparent in the way Kat is such a fair-weather ally. Sure, she notices how few BIPOC students there are, asks Taylor their pronouns, acknowledges various forms of privileged, throws the use of 'boys and girls' at the headmaster derisively, 'as if non-binary people don't exist.' She says all the right things. But she's perfectly happy to overlook it all for her own social advancement. In a very real sense, that's the whole point of the plot (if looked at from a different angle than the author presents it to us).

And honestly, the author could have done SO much with that set up. What a chance to show self reflection and growth in the main character...not to mention commentary on a lot of real-world allyship. But she doesn't take the opportunity. The end result is a book that feels like corporate allyship...you know, where they say the right things during June and purchase the right optics (or try to publish the right books), but don't actually change their policies to protect anyone or improve lives and drop it all come July. So, ick. And bonus ick in a book with two baby-lesbians as the main characters and, one would presume, the primary audience.

All and all, this wasn't a big winner for me. But I do love the art on the cover. That's why I picked the book up in the first place.

Vampire Diaries up in here.. Kat transfers to an elite vampire academy where she ends up rooming with her former friend Taylor. Past clashes but they reconnect to solve some conspiracies that the higher ups are covering up, synthetic blood.

This was an enjoyable read but it was a bit too woke.. and I’m over people like that that are ruining our future and children ( that’s my feels and I’m allowed to have them). It was just a bit problematic and I wish I could get past it, but to each their own.

I DNF'd this. There was clear racism and classism in the book. Absolutely not for me.

I had been extremely excited to read this but that excitement was quickly taken away, I am not quite sure what the author was thinking when they wrote this. This book could have been absolutely amazing. It was so easy to not make it simply offensive. I think I got maybe 5% in before I stopped reading this one.

I am not a person who negatively reviews books usually but this was simply unacceptable especially for something I was so so excited for.

While I loved the premise of this book, unfortunately I did not connect with the characters or the story as much as I would have liked. I also know that several Own Voices reviewers expressed concern over some of the content and this should be taken into account when discussing the book or considering it for purchase.

I was supposed to be on a blog tour for this book, but the tour was cancelled due to problematic content. Having now finished reading this book for myself, I can see why.

This book is trying to be a look at how the capitalist upper class do not care about and actively exploit those who they see as being beneath them, and that even the rich people who aren’t actively involved in hurting others like this are still passively accepting this system and perpetuating that hurt in the process. That’s what it’s trying to do. Taylor and Galen just not getting it whenever Kat ran into a roadblock or couldn’t take a certain risk due to her precarious position because they’re used to things being easy for them because they’re rich vampires who’ve never had to worry about where their next meal would come from came close to being a decent allegory for class differences in reality. However, Kat always fell short of putting it into words that these two, especially Taylor as she got angry with Kat more than once over Kat’s unwillingness to throw everything she had away, could never fully understand what her life had been like and so why she felt like she had to act a certain way as a result. Also, the reveals near the end of the book undermined this whole message, so. Never mind, I guess.

Other reviewers have spoken about the antisemitism present in this book, so I’m not going to be saying anything new here. One of the people involved in the plot to secretly control the world using blood is literally compared to a lizard at one point. I’m sure that Laurens didn’t intend to incorporate antisemitic tropes, but it’s something that authors writing about vampires need to be careful of, and the lizard comparison makes it blatantly clear that Laurens wasn’t careful.

When protagonist Kat points out that this super expensive and selective school, only attended by those deemed ‘the best of the best’ by the headmaster, only has seven students who aren’t white, and asks why this is, she get the response, from the other protagonist who we’re supposed to also be rooting for, that poc probably wouldn’t want to come to a school this elitist anyway. Not that the way the system has been designed means that poc are excluded from the opportunities that rich white people have, but that they wouldn’t want to come in the first place. And then the matter is dropped and never brought up again. Huh?

There are two major characters of colour in this book. One is Galen, the super rich heir to a shady family business, whose mother is Indian. His dad was with the British East India Company, y’know, that colonised and committed atrocities in India, and he harassed Galen’s mother for years into accepting his proposal, and this is apparently supposed to be ‘not as messed up as it sounds.’ The screenshot has been floating around Twitter recently, and it would be one thing if it was shown that Galen is wrong about it not being messed up or that he’s trying to convince himself that it’s okay when it’s not, but that’s not what’s going on here. Kat drops the discussion, and doesn’t think about it any further, and it’s never addressed. I don’t believe that if a character says something in a book that automatically means the author believes it, but this revisionist history being left entirely unchallenged in a YA novel is at best irresponsible, especially when coming from a white author. Later on, Galen is asked why he’s not in the school’s society for students of colour, and he brushes it off saying that it’s not really for people like him. What’s that supposed to mean? He’s not white, but not so not white that he considers it to be an important part of him, and he seems to view himself as being above poc who do see it as important. Again, this comment is made without note and is left unchallenged, and while there could be room for a story exploring this disconnect in his identity, this story doesn’t get explored here, and shouldn’t really be tackled by a white author anyway.

The other major character of colour is a girl specifically described as being Chinese named Lucy. Lucy is a social media influencer and forms half of a mean girl duo with white girl Evangeline. Lucy’s role in the story is to introduce the concept of vampiric charisma to the reader, that’s how she got all her followers after all, and to cause a major incident in the book. Lucy throws a party at which she brings along some humans for the vampires in attendance to drink from, which is shown to be an unambiguously violent and horrific thing for her to do and for people to be participating in. The Chinese character is the most actively violent and has amassed a large following through mind control. Um???

The endings for both of these characters are also worth mentioning. Galen is left in a difficult position, with his future looking uncertain and unstable, and the main characters wonder if they could’ve done more to help him before ultimately shrugging it off. Lucy and Evangeline both tormented Kat and Taylor throughout the book, but at the end of everything Taylor is still in contact with Evangeline and they’re on kinda good terms, while Lucy is despised by them both and Kat’s going around telling her human friends that Lucy is ‘problematic’ and that they should unfollow her. First, I died a little inside at the Twitter-style phrasing, which Kat said out loud, because of the level of understatement there. Second, and more importantly, the white girl can be forgiven for everything she did, but the non-white characters can’t and either have to be left in a worse position than they started in or have to be completely villainised. Why is that? Why were these characters written in this way? I mean, we know why. It’s unacceptable, and frankly it’s gross.

There’s a minor running theme through this book that being apathetic and constantly judging everyone around you aren’t good things, and spending your life thinking you’re better than everyone else is only going to make you and the people around you miserable. Except this is first said by characters (Lucy and Evangeline) who don’t take their own advice, and Taylor never seems to learn it either, and right at the start Taylor was girl-hatey about people who hadn’t done anything to her except exist in her proximity, and in the end I could see what Laurens was trying to do but I think she seriously missed the mark.

Has Laurens ever met a teenager? The school doesn’t have a set of rules, instead it has an ‘Honor Code’ that students are expected to apply to every situation and magically know whether they are or aren’t allowed to do something according to it, with them potentially getting in a lot of trouble if they guess wrong. When I was in year 12, so when I was the same age as the characters here, my school had a dress code. The intention behind it was for us to dress smartly, but it was pretty specific in weird and unnecessary ways, especially for girls, disallowing some things that were perfectly workplace appropriate and allowing some things that were decidedly not. Of course, this led to many people making sure to wear things in the latter category. We ended up having an assembly telling us that we needed to dress ourselves according to ‘the spirit of the dress code’, a phrase which became an instant school-wide meme because of how ridiculous it was. If it wasn’t specifically written down in the rules, and sometimes even if it was specifically written down in the rules but we disagreed with it, then it wasn’t getting obeyed. Kat worrying about the Honor Code made sense, but any other student in that school citing it at any point absolutely did not. They wouldn’t care. Have you ever met a 16/17 year old who’s that pressed about not making their school look bad? Over ‘rules’ that aren’t even concretely written down anywhere? I certainly haven’t.

I’m aware that the Harry Potter reference in the arc is changed into a Star Wars reference in the final version of the book, however this reference shouldn’t have made it this far in the first place. Rowling showed her hand long enough ago that it’s baffling that Laurens included it at all. Plus, the reference is in the context of negatively describing how somebody looks, so either way it comes off as mean spirited and not strictly necessary.

I enjoyed the way that the scene detailing Kat’s queer crisis was written, with her spiralling thoughts being intercut with what she was physically doing at the time. I appreciated that it was highlighted that while some queer people always know that they’re queer, some queer people do not, and the belief that queer people always know who they are from the moment they’re capable of forming thought can do more harm than good to people who are questioning. I liked that Kat figured out that she liked girls, and thought that she probably didn’t like guys, but ultimately put the label question to the side as her actively liking girls, and specifically Taylor, was the more important thing. Taylor calls herself a lesbian many times, so this wasn’t a case of a weird aversion to the word lesbian, but for a lot of people it’s not that simple and it’s not that clear cut and all they’ll achieve by trying to pin themselves down immediately is extra stress. Kat is most likely a lesbian, but her figuring out that she’s definitely attracted to women, and deciding that figuring out for certain whether she’s attracted to men too or not is a problem for another day, was an approach that I did enjoy.

It doesn’t make up for any of the racism though. Not even a little. And the relationship between the girls didn’t quite hit for me, either. I would not recommend this book.

Paranormal isn’t usually a go-to genre for me, but when I heard about YOUNGBLOOD, I kinda couldn’t resist. I have hardly kept up with current vampire books, so it’s possible some of the things that appealed most to me have been done in other places, but a lot of things in the description of the story felt pretty fresh and new to me.

I loved the idea that the vampires have developed a blood substitute and that because of a pandemic, it has become unsafe to feed on human blood. The changes that brought to the vampire culture and community and the way that’s explored in the story were things I’ve never seen done anywhere else.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a boarding school that’s 100% all vampires, either. I liked that element to the story, because it created room to really explore some of the vampire culture ideas that I thought made this book really cool.

Not only is it a vampire book set in a boarding school, it’s also part murder mystery. YOUNGBLOODS has lots of layers to explore, and I loved that as each chapter unfolded, those layers kept getting exposed, and I kept getting more and more drawn into the story.

In terms of characters, I liked Kat immediately. She’s so sweet, and really wants to find a way to have connections with her people. Taylor had to grow on me. At the beginning especially, she kind of came off like the super judgy, too cool for the cool kids type that just tends not to be a character I connect easily with. But as I got to see some of her more vulnerable moments and see her use her anger and her power for good, I grew to love her as much as I loved Kat.

On the whole, it took me a few chapters to really invest in YOUNGBLOODS, but once I did, I really enjoyed reading it. I think readers who like paranormal romance like THE FELL OF DARK by Caleb Roehrig will like this one.

I did enjoy this book when I read it. Taylor and Galen were my favorite character and I loved the mystery of what was going on. However, it's been brought to my attention that there are several problematic parts. Namely, the conversation between Galen and Kat about his parents, as well as antisemitic tropes in the vampires in general. I would encourage the author to go back through and get sensitivity readers

This book started out as a fun, interesting read. I loved the lesbian representation, the tropes and, of course, the vampires and mystery vibes.

However, there were some things I couldn’t see past. The author—who is white—wrote some truly problematic things into this book. There were lines that were racist and wrong, like the implication that the colonisation of India “wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

I can’t support a book like this so I will not be recommending it, despite the things I did like.

This book is problematic. One of the main characters, Kat, is portrayed as a white saviour being the only one to be against homophobia and racism.

If you love Twilight.. or you know the Vampires aspect of it.. LOL
Welp.. You will NEED this book in your life!
Vampires, a murder mystery, and more vampires.. SIGN ME UP!

The first thing that came to mind as soon as I began reading Youngblood is that it reminded me of Vampire Academy except what I love is that the romance does not run smoothly and it is a lesbian romance. Not only that but beyond the romance elements, this is one very well written novel with a ton of thought behind it and a great deal of intrigue. 

In “Youngblood”, one of the things the author Sasha Laurens has done really well is building the intrigue and mystery surrounding Kat and her mother. I also really like her world building, the thought put behind the concept for not only the vampire academy but the blood disease and how it impacts the vampires in this world, including the feeding on humans and how vampires are now born instead of created by their makers. 

As for the characters, all the main characters were engaging. I enjoyed that neither Kat or Taylor are perfect but they learn from each other. I also like how both get involved in the intrigue surrounding their school and society. Their romance and friendship don’t run smoothly but the romance is more powerful for doing so. I love the sexy vampire love. 

If you like sexy vampire love with a different background than the typical, I highly recommend this novel. It has tons of interesting choices in the world, how vampires are created, how humans are thought of and society in general. I found the synthetic blood and blood disease intriguing. This was a thoroughly fun read.

Kat Finn is part of the latest advancement in Vampirdom: She's a Youngblood, born from vampire parents rather than turned. Her generation is the first of its kind after a deadly plague began to kill humans and vampires alike and made feeding on humans impossible. Since that time, vampires have relied on a blood substitute called Hema. The community has mainly come together in light of their joint struggles— with the exception of Kat and her mom, who seem to avoid other vampires at all costs. Kat's mom is infuriated when she secretly applies to Harcote, the prestigious vampire only boarding school, but once she's accepted, it's impossible to decline.

Taylor Sanger absolutely hates Harcote. Not only is she the only openly gay student on campus, she's seemingly the only one not desperately longing for the days when vampires can dominate humans again rather than live among them. That changes when Kat, a long lost friend and former crush, becomes her new roommate. The two have a complicated past, but as a conspiracy unravels around them, they may be exactly what the Youngblood generation needs to prevail.

Youngbloods introduces unique vampire lore without getting too outlandish. I really enjoyed the intricate ways the disease, the search for a cure, Hema, and vampire politics intertwine for some fresh worldbuilding. At times, it felt a little over-explained, but I'd prefer that to flimsy details.

Kat and Taylor are dual narrators and I enjoyed them both. Taylor is more confident and interesting than the constantly conflicted Kat, but they're designed that way. After all, Kat is new to the true vampire community and she's pretty naive. But they both have some sweet moments, some rough patches, and some snappy quips throughout.

The romance between Kat and Taylor is really sweet and a bit sexy (for a YA book) once it kicks in, but it's probably worth noting that it takes a good long while to kick in. These characters have serious chemistry and you can tell they're the OTP from the get-go, but the book's romance and *its main plot* are victim to its own setup.

The introductory setup moved quickly enough, but the middle sagged until about the 60% mark. There was a lot of focus on setting up a series of secondary characters, only one or two of whom was actually important in the end. I was especially frustrated by Galen, who could've genuinely been an intriguing part of the plot if not so quickly discarded as unimportant once he was no longer a romantic interest. I understand that complex relationships and drama should be part of any good story, but the major mystery of a novel shouldn't be introduced more than halfway through. In fact, I stopped and looked uo the book at about the halfway point to make sure it wasn't part of a planned duology.

Describing the book as dark academia also comes across as a bit of a stretch. Yes, vampires are traditionally dark figures and there is an off-stage death, but this is a bunch of teenagers who just happen to drink the Just Egg equivalent of blood and want to get to the bottom of a conspiracy.

Overall, I enjoyed this one. The wordbuilding is all there, the main characters work great independently and as a couple, but the pacing didn't work as well as it could have. My experience may be a bit marred because I was very busy at the time I read it, but it was inconsistent enough that I can't quite get it to 4 stars.

I loved the idea of this book! Anything related to Vampire Academy or high school drama, sign me up!

I was participating in TBR and Beyond's Book tour of Youngblood. During which, we were told the tour was cancelled due to sensitive material that is not inclusive of those within our community.

Of course, I had to keep reading and sadly, I agreed. A school full of prep school kids does make sense with the entitlement and cliques, BUT I had some serious issues with comments that were mentioned in the book. First off, I think it was poor taste to have one asian character, only to have them villianized. I think that's really harmful for representation when only one character identifies a certain way. There was also parts discussing colonization, and cringy race comments.

Overall I think this had potential. It seems like the editor just let some content things get through that shouldn't have. I also think this would be a great new adult book if you changed the age of the students to maybe college due to the content being so heavy.

I will not be posting to my social media accounts because I just don't think it represents what I want to put out. I really gave it a try, and it has potential, but morally I have some issues with this book.