Reread: July 27th, 2016 
 Rating: 2.5/5 
 ***Minor spoilers, spoilers for books 1-3*** 
 Original Date Read: November 2011 
 Rating: 5/5 
 With Dimitri now a Strigoi, Rose feels that she owes it to him to set after him and kill him. There was a time when her and Dimitri had agreed that they'd rather die than live their life as a Strigoi, and she won't return to Lissa until she finishes her task. She plans to start with his hometown somewhere in Siberia, but not remembering the name of the town she must first scout out popular Moroi and Dhampir hangouts in the hope of convincing someone to tell her the name. Back at the Academy, Lissa is being used as a bit of a pawn for the Queen. She must greet other royals, go to parties, and do random odd tasks for the Queen. While Rose is away Lissa meets a girl named Avery, daughter of the new headmaster for St. Vladimir's. While she could never replace Rose, Lissa finds that she needs the distraction. 
 When I read this several years ago, I rated it 5 stars as I had the first 3 in the series. While I don't dispute those ratings, I find myself wondering why at the time I found this book to be great enough to rate it 5 stars. I suppose now I've read more books to compare with, but in my opinion this book definitely isn't 5 star material. I have a few reasons for this, but one of them has to do with the super slow pace of this book. As many people have stated in their reviews, the first few hundred pages don't progress the story along all that much. Stuff doesn't start really happening until around three quarters of the way through. The ending was good but all in all the book was pretty lackluster. 
 My main issue with this book was that we had neither Rose/Dimitri or Rose/Lissa for the majority. With three books spent so carefully and effectively building these two main relationships, I felt that it was the wrong mood to write a fourth book with neither of these relationships very prevalent. A lot of my love for this series lies in the characters and their relationships. While Rose is a great character on her own, sure, it just isn't the same without the influence of the other characters on her actions and/or decisions. You just don't get the same effect when Rose only sees Lissa through the bond than if they were in a room together. 
 Overall, while this book was alright, it was definitely the weakest in the series at this point. There was a lot of unnecessary length to the novel that made it a bit of a chore to read in the beginning, and it didn't feel right reading about Rose without Dimitri or Lissa around her. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend that you stop reading this series after the third book (because I know how the series ends and it's worth it to keep going) but this wasn't as enjoyable as it could've been. I wish Lissa had ended up going with Rose, or the book was either shorter or had more action. However, I'll definitely continue in my reread for this series, and I'd recommend that you read this, if only to continue onto the next book after.