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Keys to the Repository (Blue Bloods #4.5) by Melissa de la Cruz.

Title: Keys to the Repository

Author: Melissa de la Cruz

Genre: YA, Paranormal, Romance

Publisher: Atom

Publication date: 29th June 2010

Goodreads summary: Lavish parties. Passionate meetings in the night. Bone-chilling murders. Midterms. The day-to-day life of Schuyler Van Allen and her Blue Bloods friends (and enemies) is never boring. But there's oh-so-much more to know about these beautiful and powerful teens. Below the streets of Manhattan, within the walls of the Repository, exists a wealth of revealing information about the vampire elite that dates back before the Mayflower. In a series of short stories, journal entries, and never-before-seen letters, New York Times bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz gives her hungry fans the keys to the Repository and an even more in-depth look into the secret world of the Blue Bloods. Won't you come inside?

{ Review }

I wasn't really sure what to expect of this book. I find that novellas are usually very hit and miss and as I find the first three of Melissa de la Cruz's books to be fairly average I was convinced that this was going to be a miss. Then, I read book four in the Blue Bloods series, The Van Allen Legacy (click here for review) and my hope was restored. Unfortunately, my high spirits were short lived as I found this novella to be a disappointment.

As with the previous four synopses, I felt that the blurb missed telling the reader what the book was actually about. The Goodreads summary is much better than the blurb on the paperback because it actually tells you what is included in this book: a series of short stories, journal entries, and never-before-seen letters. I was quite excited about this because I thought it would be a nice quick read that would clarify the blank spots in my memory about who was who and who was related to whom - the what, why, how etc., which in some ways it was, but the way that it was presented bothered me.

This book starts off with a recap of the previous four books, which I found to be a little boring and useless given that I have just read the previous books. Then there are a series of records on each Blue Blood family stating who a character is, who they used to be, how that character is linked to other characters and other relevant details about their lives. I say relevant, though in my opinion some of them were completely random and irrelevant. It was a little boring, but it was a useful recap. Then, suddenly, we're thrown into a short story about Jack and Schuyler's first meeting in their secret apartment. Talk about random. It was an interesting little snippet into their lives and I enjoyed it, but I was puzzled by its strange placement in this novella. Immediately after this short story, it went back to more character records. After a few more records, we were right back into another short story, this time about Mimi and Kingsley. The book continued in this way with short stories randomly slotted in to break up the character records. There's also a sneak peak at 'Wolf Pact', another book by Melissa de la Cruz, which was really interesting, but again, random. I had no idea that this series was linked to the Blue Bloods (it's about Bliss and her hunt to find the hounds of hell) so i'll be adding that to my TBR pile.

At the end of the book there are three appendices, one about the secondary characters in the series, one about -- and one about ---. I found these appendices to be long and boring, especially the one that went on for pages and pages listing all the secondary characters in the series, who, in my opinion, have no real relevance. I found this part extremely boring and skimmed through the list of names of people I could barely remember.

All in all, i was incredibly disappointed by this novella. the only parts that I really enjoyed were the short stories, but I just don't understand why they were slotted in so randomly. I felt that book was really disorganised and a bit all over the place. The majority of the records contain in uninteresting details about characters or repeat information that the readers already know. This is also my least favourite cover in the series. It was so black and more glam, less vampire.

As you can tell I was very unimpressed by this novella; however, I think this was partly because I read it straight after The Van Allen Legacy (Blue Bloods #4) which was really good and because I've read the previous books really recently. I think this novella will appeal to those who are getting back into this series after a long pause and have forgotten who some of the characters are. The short stories are cute and give a few more details about Dylan, Bliss, Schuyler and Jack, and Mimi and Kingsley, but I'm not sure whether its worth reading through all the Repository's records just for these stories. On the plus side its a really quick read so I didn't waste too much time on it.