The World of Richelle Mead App

Now if you are a big fan of the Vampire Academy series, you may have heard of this app before. And if you haven't read the books or watched the movie I recommend that you do and you can see my review of the first book here.

Yes, this app is free to download for iPhones, iPads, and the iPod Touch. Most features come free but the app does offer in-app purchases.


When you first open up the app, you get to read a message from Richelle Mead herself. She talks about how excited she is about the app and welcomes you into this new way of seeing the series.


The "Your Books" portion of the app consisted of all of her published novels to date and rather lengthy excerpts. Some of this excerpts were in between one to three chapters. In order to read the entire book, you do need to purchase them but I believe that big fans of the Bloodlines and Vampire Academy series will benefit from having all the books in one place for easy read.



Moving on to the most helpful part this app, the timeline and character map. The timeline is the best thing to have next to you when you are reading the books. As you get farther along the series (Vampire Academy and Bloodlines), it is so easy to get lost and wonder "Wait, did this happen?" or "Which happened first?" I didn't find any earth-shattering spoilers there just little events to help jog the memory.

The character map is just as helpful. Many enemies are made throughout the series just as friendships are. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all of that so the character map offers a great way to double check. Yet, it is rather out of date but I guess that is just to prevent spoilers.

The app also contained a nice personal biography of the author and shows her personality in ways the novels never could. You also get to see videos of Richelle Mead and see a feed of her latest tweets.

There is a "Community" portion of the app which at first I thought was the most interesting but as time went on became more and more boring. The polls are rarely ever updated and I feel like I've seen the same one for months. And there is a news part of the Community but it too is rarely ever updated. Since the novels have been translated into various languages and have sold over eight million copies worldwide, there are bound to be readers all over the world which the map shows. I thought this was the coolest part of the app because it was really interesting to see where other readers are.


The overall design of the app was gorgeous. The book shelf is adorable as is the wallpaper. The colors really enhanced the general appeal of the app. Not to mention how easy the app was to navigate through.

But the app does take up quite a bit of space on your device so I would only recommend this app for  the most dedicated of fans. For this reason, I will probably be removing this app from my device. I like the app but I'm not the biggest fan of the series and I want to leave some space to download other apps that I am more likely to enjoy. But that does not mean that you shouldn't try it - if you like the series a lot then go for it! I wish every series could have an app like this one.