With the way things ended in The Golden Lily I was really anitcipating this book. I'm really close to liking this series more than Vampire Academy. While I did enjoy the read, I almost think my expectations may have been a little too high for this one. I just remember being kind of thrown off and surprised by the previous two books, and now that I know how the series is going to go and more of the story I think I put too much pressure on this book to be more extraordinary. 
 The Indigo Spell picks up a few weeks after the events of The Golden Lily. After Adrian's declaration of his affections for Sydney things have been a little tense between them. Since Jill is connected with Adrian there's also tension between Sydney and Jill. But on a trip back east for Sonja's wedding Sydney and Adrian are thrown together and decide to let the tension go. I'm glad that Richelle Mead made the decision to have the characters remain civil to each other instead of throwing in a lot of angst. Vampire Academy, I found, was filled with angst of Rose and Dimitri's slightly scandalous feelings for each other, but to me Richelle Mead stayed true to the characters in that being angst-driven is not a trait of Sydney's. I found that I liked (as in the previous two books) the scenes with Adrian and Sydney the most. I wanted them to be together and throw banter back and forth and just because their feelings are hanging in the air over them didn't diminish their chemistry from the story at all. 
 The Golden Lily was filled with a lot of revelations. Besides Adrian's feelings finally coming out, we learn about Marcus Finch who apparently broken from the Alchemists, something that Sydney has never heard of before. The Indigo Spell finds Sydeny persuing the Marcus Finch angle. She hasn't been too impressed with the way the Alchemists are dealing with things. She feels like they are keeping secrets from her, and this causes her to wonder how far the secrets go and what else the higer-ups are keeping from everyone else. 
 I was happy that Richelle Mead didn't drag out things with the Marcus Finch storyline. Sydney does, in fact, make contact with him, but what results is less than impressive and obviously Mead wrote this storyline this way because Sydney is less than impressed with Marcus as well by the end. 
 The secondary storyline in the book involves a Mrs. Terwillinger's sister. A rogue witch who is apparently attacking young inexperienced witches that have a lot of power and harvesting the power for herself to keep herself strong and young forever. While I felt that this storyline was the more interesting of the two, I was still less than impressed overall. I mean in The Golden Lily we find out about the Warriors who are an organization (much like the alchemists) who want to destroy Strigoi. Unlike the alchemists, however, they have now moved their sights to the Moroi and possibly people who are on the side of the Moroi as well. While we do learn a little more condeming information linking the Warriors and the Alchemists, I really felt that the Indigo Spell lacked a good evil opponent. 
 Regardless, this book was clearly not about Sydney and Co facing down a big bad. This book was about the culmination of changes that Sydney has been experiencing in herself since she was introduced in the later Vampire Academy books. This book is a turning point in Sydney's person. She has a lot of decisions to make and she makes them in this book, we the reader will obviously see the consequences of her decisions in The Fiery Heart which will be out later this year. Will Sydney be able to balance her true feelings with how she presents herself to the Alchemists without being found out? I'm looking forward to finding out. Until Then!