Vampire Academy Epic Giveaway!

I know you’ve been waiting all weekend for this! I hope while you were waiting for this, viagra 40mg you were out there, watching Vampire Academy in the theaters! Remember, we won’t get Frostbite if the first movie doesn’t do well, so get your butts out there and watch the movie as much as you can!

Moving on though!

You know last week (its already been a week, WHAT?), I attended the Vampire Academy Meet and Greet, the Vampire Academy Music Afterparty and the Vampire Academy WORLD Premiere!

And it was a total blast. I had SUCH a fun time, I can’t even begin to explain it. I mean, I did explain it. In blog posts. That you might have seen. I hope you saw. I hope I’m not writing to no one!

Anyway. I managed to score a TON of free swag at these events, and so now I’m having a pretty awesome giveaway. Are you totally excited? You should be!

Here are the…

Prizes!

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Two Vampire Academy Pencils!

One Sparkly Gold Vampire Academy Nail Polish!

One Vampire Academy Lollipop (Which I Can Confirm is Delicious!)

One Sparkly Pink Vampire Academy Iphone 4/4S Cover

One Copy of the Vampire Academy Soundtrack!

and the biggie….

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A Vampire Academy Poster signed by Zoey Deutch (Rose Hathaway), Dominic Sherwood (Christian Ozera) and Sami Gayle (Mia).

Just an FYI: Sami is in the top corner, Zoey is across “Vampire” and Dom’s is on the bottom corner.

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Are you SO totally excited right now? I would be!

Now for the boring part…the Rules!

The contest will run from today, February 10th to February 21st!

The winner will be contacted within 12 hours of contest end, and if the winner does NOT respond within 24 hours, a new winner will be chosen.

The contest IS International :)

Make sure to come back every day to tweet about the giveaway and earn extra entries!

Share with your friends!

This contest is in no way endorsed by Richelle Mead, Mark Waters, the Weinstein Company, etc. WhatANerdGirlSays is not responsible for any lost or damaged prizes.

That’s the boring part, I know, but it has to be done!

Here’s how to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Have a blast, and good luck! 

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Vampire Academy Movie Review

Wrapping up the day of Vampire Academy posts (check out my recap of the mall tour in Los Angeles here and my recap of the premiere here). Now a spoiler free review of the movie! Read on…

Vampire Academy

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Rated:

Rated PG-13 for violence, more about bloody images, find sexual content and language

Directed By:

Mark Waters

Cast:

Zoey Deutch, Danila Kozlovsky, Lucy Fry, Dominic Sherwood, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Hyland, Sami Gayle.

Find the rest on IMDB here.

IMDB Movie Synopsis:

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, half human/vampire, guardians of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discretely within our world. Her legacy is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi. This is her story.

My Review:

I am literally blown away at how well they did with this movie. While it wasn’t absolutely perfect, I thought they did a wonderful job with it.

First off, I wanted to talk about going into the movie with an open mind. I do not say this to scare you, but I honestly think with that attitude, I enjoyed the movie more. I was high on adrenaline, after being on the red carpet and sneaking pictures with cast members in the lobby of the theater, but when I went into the theater, I told myself, “open mind”. And I’m really glad I did. I think there are too many people judging the movie by the stills and the trailer and I think thats detrimental to the success of the film. YA adaptations aren’t doing well in the theaters and unless we go out and support them, they’ll just stop making them.

Oh, one more thing, with the whole “Mean Girls” thing. A lot of people don’t like that they keep putting emphasis on that, but I like it. It has the humor of Mean Girls, which is GREAT. I think it was hilarious and I’ll talk more about that later. But also, like I said, we NEED this movie to do well to get Frostbite and people love Mean Girls and I applaud anything that gets them into the theater.

Okay rant off. That being said, I went in open minded, and also with the reminder that the first book is much more lighthearted than the rest of the series.

I was immediately struck at how well each of the actors understood their characters. I was amazed at how well Zoey was Rose, Danila was Dimitri and so on. I think I was most impressed with Dominic as Christian. Christian is one of the characters that I’ve always loved and I think he rocked it big time. After meeting the cast the day before, and seeing how nice and genuine they were, I was so impressed with how well they knew their characters and how well they portrayed them in the movie. I will now think of most of these actors and actresses when I go to read the book. They just captured them so well.

I also think there was an incredible balance of action and romance. The romance building between Christian and Lissa and the subtle one between Rose and Dimitri were just as how I’d imagine it in the novel. Its important and its there but its not overwhelming. The movie is not wrapped in the romance and I’m okay with that. There was a ton of action. I loved watching both Rose and Dimitri kick some serious ass in this movie. They really did the story of Rose’s return and work to become caught up on her guardian skills so well.

I really think the movie was about the friendship between Rose and Lissa, just as it should be. Vampire Academy is a huge story about friendship and loyalty, and that is definitely what they got. The friendship between Lissa and Rose has its sweet moments, it has the moments where Rose is protective and it has hilarious moments. Its perfect.

Which leads me to one of my favorite parts of the movie: the humor. The chemistry between the actors led to some well-placed lines and me laughing in my seat the whole movie. Myself and the 7 other people I was with were rolling around in our seats, laughing out loud. I’m pretty sure we were the loudest people in the theatre and I wish I knew the casts’ reactions to our reactions haha. It was a VERY funny movie. I really could not stop laughing.

There were minor things that bothered me. I was hoping for a bit more Mason, but if we get Frostbite, I have hopes we’ll get way more Mason. I think I need to rewatch the movies with subtitles because of all the accents haha. Dominic wasn’t too bad because he spoke loud and clear so I got all of his lines, same with Lucy. Danila talked really really low for some reason so sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was hearing what he was saying correctly. He just needed to speak up a bit but he really rocked as Danila. I thought the end scene (I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t read the book) was a little rushed, and the lust charm scene was a bit cheesy but all in all, it was only small details that bothered me and none of them were deal breakers for the movie in the slightest.

And now that I’ve watched the movie, I want to watch the movie again and I want to reread the books again. I’m all obsessed with VA right now haha.

Rating:

4 out of 5

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So get out there this weekend and see this movie! It was SO enjoyable to watch and, as a VA fan, I was incredibly impressed with it. I would love to see more of the series, I would absolutely love to see Frostbite (admittedly because more Zoey Deutch and we could cast Adrian!!!) and the only the way to get sequels for further movies would be to go out and see this one! So go go go go and tell me what you think when you do!

Vampire Academy Week: Mall Tour Meet and Greet and Music Afterparty!

Hello there my friends! This week on What A Nerd Girl Says is Vampire Academy week. Monday and Tuesday was all about Vampire Academy. I spent hours waiting for a meet and greet, this partied with the cast, remedy and got to see the movie at the red carpet premiere and it was all incredible. Now I’m ready to share it all with you!

The first event of Vampire Academy week was the Mall Tour stop at the Grove in Los Angeles.

Sylvia (Fangirl Feeels), Erin (That One Geek Girl) and I arrived at the Grove SUPER early, around 6 am, and were by far the first people there. We have a tendency to do that. When we got there, they were just beginning to set up for the event!

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They started an official line at around 9 am and we were able to get our wristbands! Yay for wristbands!

The day was spent with Sylvia, Erin, and my other fangirl friends, Cassandra, Mina, Jeanette, Jade, and Alex. We all had such a fun time hanging out and getting food and talking about fandoms and books. When we all get together, we have such a fun time. We all instantly bond because of our love for books and all things nerd.

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Awkward elevator selfie….which is also SUPER awesome!

The Vampire Academy was really cool! They set up hairstylists and makeup artists to make us absolutely fabulous.

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Me and my beautiful friend Cassandra after our makeovers!

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The people that were holding the event had professional photographers and once you got all glammed up in your makeup and hair, you could put on some accessories (check out the tiara!) and take some pictures. They asked us to take a “serious” pose and it was just so ridiculous that I will never forget this picture. Its just too fantastic for life. It reminded us all of those glamour shots you could take with your best friends at the mall in junior high haha.

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The VIPs were able to get these SUPER amazing Vampire Academy sweatshirts. My friends and I tried so hard throughout the whole event to get our hands on some and we all ended up with one! Which made me SO happy! I had to answer a trivia question and it was who wrote the books. Not exactly hard haha.

Then it was time for the actual meet and greet. Now I’ve been to a ton of signings and one thing that is always a bummer is the whole thing with pictures. Because most events get all LAME with photos and practically chop your head off when you even think of touching your phone while meeting the guests. This event was SO refreshingly different. They had a professional photographer taking pictures of us, and us with the cast. SO perfect.

My friends got some pictures too though :)

Picture Nine

Me walking up to talk to Cameron Monaghan, who plays Mason in the film. He was SO incredibly sweet. He introduced himself, like “Hi I’m Cameron” and me, being insanely awkward, I just went “I know!” in a squeaky voice.

Picture Nine Point Five

I think I’m discussing my tattoos with the cast. I was talking to Cameron and Lucy Fry when Dominic Sherwood noticed my Deathly Hallows tattoo and then Zoey Deutch (MY LOVE!) noticed my Divergent tattoo, and then I decided to show them the rest haha. It was funny!

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I think this was when I told Zoey that I had a massive crush on her and Dominic started laughing and it was just all fun. Straight up, I do have a crush on Zoey. She was so sweet. I was like “I have a crush on you” and she was like “I have a crush on you too!” which I know she only said to be nice but pssssh I’ll never live it down haha.

Picture Nine Point Nine

It’s kind of blurry but you can kind of see me hugging Zoey Deutch. Basically the best thing that happened that night. I died.

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The beautiful professional picture of me with the cast: Sami Gayle (Mia), Dominic Sherwood (Christian), Zoey (Rose), Lucy (Lissa), and Cameron (Mason). I was so excited that we got two more cast members in the addition of Cameron and Sami!

Picture Eight

The photographer caught my hug with Dominic, which made me so happy. SO freakin cute.

After the actual meet and greet, we all converged to charge our phones and basically freak out about how awesome it was to meet the five of them. We waited a bit to go back, because we wanted to grab some extra posters for some giveaways (keep an eye out this weekend!) and then we got to take some selfies with the cast, which is always fun!

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The absolutely GORGEOUS Dominic Sherwood. He was absolutely amazing as Christian. His eyes are mesmerizing. I can’t handle his eyes.

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The super adorable Cameron Monaghan :D

After the mall tour stop, Sylvia, Erin and I met up with our friend Marla in Hollywood at this club called Lure to attend the SUPER awesome music afterparty, where the cast was going to make an appearance, and where Iggy Azalea performed as well. It was SUPER fun. We danced, and partied, had some free drinks (with red bull, which was SUPER weird haha and made me hyper).

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Sylvia and I! We were so silly and accidentally grabbed drinks with whiskey in them. If you’ve never had whiskey before, its absolutely disgusting. We tried to handle it but…yeah, that didn’t go well. So we ditched the drinks and went to go get better ones. As we’re walking up to the bar, we realize the cast had arrived. It was so loud and Sylvia was pointing something out to me, which I thought was Dominic Sherwood. I was like “yes, I know, he’s there, he’s hot, we just saw him” and she was like “No, Sara, its Danila!!” and I basically fainted with excitement.

We weren’t expecting Danila to appear because he had just flown in from Russia. You could tell he was feeling tired and laidback, just in jeans, t-shirt and hoodie and he was hanging out with his friends. I was nervous and anxious to interrupt him but I knew if I walked away, all my fangirls friends (and YOU guys) would never let me live it down.

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So I asked Danila for a picture and a hug and it was awesome. I didn’t think it was possible but he is even better looking in person than in the pictures. Seriously guys. Swoon!

Then I spent the next few minutes stalking the rest of the cast to get some selfies with them!

Picture Twelve

Me and the beautiful Lucy Fry!

Picture Thirteen

I love this picture of me and Sami Gayle. I love that she plays Mia, who is SUCH a bitch, but she’s such a sweet person. Isn’t it funny how that works out haha.

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I was SO determined to get a picture with Zoey and I got one! She is too beautiful for life.

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They introduced the cast on stage, and I had to share this picture because Zoey looks so cute! She is seriously a goofball.

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Then Iggy Azalea performed. I honestly had no idea who she was, and she’s not really the music I listen to AT ALL but she was seriously so pretty and so charismatic on stage and I super enjoyed it. It was fun to dance to, and I was hopped up on some red bull haha.

Picture Seventeen

My poster! Signed by Zoey and Lucy on top, and then Dominic, Sami and Cameron on the bottom!

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All in all, Monday was a SERIOUSLY successful day! I had a blast, and meeting the cast and hanging out with my friends all day. I got no sleep, barely ate, and was SUPER exhausted by the end of the night but it was so so so worth it. And the next day was the premiere. Come back later for the recap of that event!

To see all the pictures of the event, check out the album on Facebook here.

Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice Book Reviews

I don’t normally do dual book reviews but I read this so quickly, case and they sort of blended together, so its easier for me to do that. Also, since then, I’ve read three more books and I need to review those as well, so it would just be easier for me to review them together.

Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

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You Can Find the Books At:

GoodReads-SB/LS

Amazon-SB/LS

Barnes and Noble-SB/LS

Book Depository-SB/LS

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Please keep in mind that while there will be NO spoilers for these two books, there will be spoilers for the previous four books. You can read the reviews for Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kiss and Blood Promise by clicking their titles. 

For Spirit Bound:

After a long and heartbreaking journey to Dimitri’s birthplace in Siberia, Rose Hathaway has finally returned to St. Vladimir’s-and to her best friend, Lissa. It is nearly graduation, and the girls can’t wait for their real lives beyond the Academy’s iron gates to begin. But Rose’s heart still aches for Dimitri, and she knows he’s out there, somewhere.
She failed to kill him when she had the chance. And now her worst fears are about to come true. Dimitri has tasted her blood, and now he is hunting her. And this time he won’t rest until Rose joins him… forever.

For Last Sacrifice:

Rose Hathaway has always played by her own rules. She broke the law when she ran away from St. Vladimir’s Academy with her best friend and last surviving Dragomir princess, Lissa. She broke the law when she fell in love with her gorgeous, off-limits instructor, Dimitri. And she dared to defy Queen Tatiana, leader of the Moroi world, risking her life and reputation to protect generations of dhampir guardians to come.
Now the law has finally caught up with Rose – for a crime she didn’t even commit. She’s in prison for the highest offense imaginable: the assassination of a monarch. She’ll need help from both Dimitri and Adrian to find the one living person who can stall her execution and force the Moroi elite to acknowledge a shocking new candidate for the royal throne: Vasilisa Dragomir.

But the clock on Rose’s life is running out. Rose knows in her heart the world of the dead wants her back…and this time she is truly out of second chances. The big question is, when your whole life is about saving others, who will save you?

My Review:

I am incredibly impressed with how much better each of these books get as the story goes along. I’ve made it clear before: series that go longer than a few books don’t usually hold up. At least I don’t tend to think so. Its hard to continually keep a story going. But Richelle Mead does it, and does it very well. After the complete heartbreak that was Blood Promise, I was immediately hooked back into the story, and finished these two books quickly.

The characters become so much better than what they were in the first four books. They become more complex, they are more than just teenagers. Rose and Lissa and Adrian and Dimitri and Christian, and all of them, its more than just the typical teen problems. They are now so much involved in their world, in the politics and the sort of dramatics that are going on that they just didn’t see when they were in school. I also think this is the novel where they begin to grow up. They are starting to experience things that make them older, wiser, smarter. Rose went through the entire experience in Russia with Strigoi Dimitri, and that has changed her. The journeys that the characters take as Dimitri returns, as a murder occurs and Rose is framed for it, as Lissa embarks on a challenge that will change her life…they all change. I think Richelle Mead really realizes that her characters are not children anymore and she reflects that so much in these last two books.

I also really enjoyed how she wrapped up these novels. I didn’t expect the things that happened to happen. I know that’s very vague but I don’t want to ruin the story in the slightest for those of you who have never read it. I think she creates all this drama, in the unexpected plot turns, like Rose being framed, and Lissa’s…challenge and I didn’t expect the outcome for any of it. I was gripping my Nook in excitement, staying up until all hours to finish the books. There was so much tension, so much mystery to the end, and it keeps you wondering how on earth it was going to end. I honestly didn’t see it coming at all. I also love all the feelings the books gave me. There was so much heartbreak but also romance, and happy endings too. I had these times of emotions that I could barely handle. There is a part with Dimitri, Rose and a little boy….and that part drove me to tears.

I think that Richelle Mead creates an incredible world, with really well developed characters. Her books have it all: action, romance, politics, coming-of-age-ness (yeah, I just made that up), humor, and so much more. It took me years to read these books because I don’t read vampire novels, but these are so much more than vampire novels. In fact, it wasn’t hard for me to forget that these characters were vampires. Her world is wonderful, and I love Rose and the rest of the characters. Its no wonder that she returned to that world for the Bloodlines series. Its addicting and fun, and I am truly in love with these books.

My Rating:

Spirit Bound: 5 out of 5 Stars

Last Sacrifice: 5 out of 5 Stars

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