Youngblood by Sasha Laurens

I have such mixed feelings for this book. The blurb sounded amazing – a queer vampire story set at a gothic boarding school – but unfortunately the execution was very problematic with all the racist and homophobic remarks, as well as the completely unnecessary HP references. So even though I did enjoy a lot of things in this story, it was not what I’d hoped for.

In short, Youngblood follows the two former childhood best friends, and vampires, Kat Finn and Taylor Sanger as they end up as roommates at an elite vampire-only boarding school. Since a virus has infected nearly all of humanity, vampires can no longer drink blood from humans but have to rely on an expensive synthetic blood substitute (Hema) to survive. This has led to a division between vampires, with elite vampires who can afford the drink and who have separated themselves from humans, whereas other poor vampires struggle to make ends meet, and even having to risk their lives to feed on humans when they can’t afford Hema – like Kat’s dad.

Desperate to find a way out of her and her mother’s poverty, Kat applied to the prestigious elite vampire school with a full scholarship. At school, she not only meets but have to share rooms with her former best friend, now enemy after Taylor betrayed Kat and her family. Taylor 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.

Soon other problems start to rise, when Taylor stumbles upon the dead body of a vampire, and Kat makes a shocking discovery in the school’s archives. On top of that, the straight Kat might not be as straight as she’d always thought, when she’s starting to have more than friendly feelings for her roommate…

I really enjoyed the concept of this story. It was witty and fun with so many things I love - queer, vampires, boarding school, friends to enemies to lovers, and headstrong female main characters – and it gave me such great Vampire Academy vibes. I also really loved Taylor’s character. But unfortunately, it was also very problematic and dealt with issues like racism and homophobia in a terrible way, and on top of that added HP references.

It was so unnecessary to ruin the story with all these racist and homophobic remarks. It feels like the author added them to prove how woke Kat was as a character, but it only made me like her less and ruined the story for no reason. The story would have worked just as well even if the boarding school had been queer-friendly and diverse.

The blasé attitude about colonization, racism, homophobia and the HP references was way too off-putting for me to be able to recommend this book to anyone. But I’ve decided to give it a 2.5 star rating nevertheless, since there were a lot of things I enjoyed and since the book ends in way that made it possible to interpret it as if the new generation got their eyes opened to the bigotry amongst the elders and that they would create a better world onwards.

Rating:
​2.5 stars rounding up to 3

​Author info:
Sasha Laurens