Masquerade

What's inside (9 sections)

1. A funeral, a flight to Venice, and a grandfather who refuses
2. Kingsley arrives, and Bliss starts losing time
3. Forbidden spells and a trial by blood
4. The weakness in Schuyler's blood
5. The Four Hundred Ball and the mask
6. What works and what does not
7. The new Regis and the new threat
8. Key takeaways
9. FAQ

The second Blue Bloods book opens at a funeral, which is a strange place to start a story about a party. Cordelia Van Alen is dead. Schuyler is fifteen, half vampire, and suddenly alone in a mansion that has belonged to her family for generations. Melissa de la Cruz published Masquerade in 2007, a year after Blue Bloods, and it keeps the same ingredients: old money, old blood, and teenagers who are cruel in the specific way that only rich, bored teenagers can be. What changes is the pressure. In the first book Schuyler was finding out what she was. Here she has to decide what to do about it while every adult around her keeps losing their nerve.

I read it right after the first one, which is the right way. Masquerade picks up the hanging threads and pulls, and much of the pleasure is watching an offhand comment from book one turn into a threat.

The short version: the Blue Bloods are getting ready for their biggest social night of the year, a new boy arrives at school who knows far too much, and Schuyler's family turns out to be more broken than she already suspected.

A funeral, a flight to Venice, and a grandfather who refuses

Grief hangs over the first act. Cordelia was the one person who told Schuyler the truth about her blood, and without her the mansion feels like a museum with the lights off. Schuyler's mother Allegra is still in her coma upstairs. The family lawyers are circling.

Schuyler's answer is to leave. She and Oliver Hazard-Perry fly to Venice to find her grandfather, Lawrence Van Alen, who has been living in exile for decades. Oliver is her human Conduit, the friend who lets her drink from him and who pays for it with dizziness and bad sleep. He is also the only person who will get on a plane with her without asking a committee for permission.

Venice in the book is not a romantic postcard. It is damp stone, shuttered palazzi, and the feeling of being watched from a window across the canal. Lawrence lives in a small house that smells of dust and old paper. He is tall and cold and has clearly decided that his family is a lost cause. He tells Schuyler that he will not come back to New York and will not help her with the coven.

That scene is the best in the early chapters. Schuyler has built up this idea of a grandfather who will fix things, and instead she gets a man who has already written her off. The disappointment is plain on the page. She is fifteen. She flew across an ocean.

The trip is also short. I wanted more of Venice, and more of Lawrence before he softens. Instead the book hustles them home, and the journey starts to feel like a device to get Schuyler out of New York.

Oliver gets less to do in Venice than he deserves. He carries bags and waits outside doors, and for a character who matters this much, he spends a lot of the trip as furniture.

Still, the refusal works as a scene. It resets the story. Schuyler goes home with nothing, and the nothing is the point. She has to build her own way forward.

Lawrence does come back, which undercuts the Venice refusal a little. He arrives in New York, takes over the Van Alen mansion, and starts restoring it room by room. He also starts training Schuyler in the gifts that come with her blood. She learns to pull shadow around herself like a coat. She learns to move without being seen, to step quietly enough that a room forgets she is there.

Those lessons are the best argument the book makes for its own lore. The powers are small and practical. Hiding in shadow is not a laser beam. It is the ability to stand in a corner and not be noticed, which for a girl who has spent her life being overlooked is both useful and a little sad.

Lawrence is still a difficult man. He treats Schuyler's training as a debt to be paid, not as affection. He lectures and withholds, charming in one scene and dismissive in the next. I never fully trusted him, and I think the book wants that.

Meanwhile the mansion gets furniture again. There are workmen, and money from somewhere. After a hundred pages of decay, the house coming back to life is a sign that Schuyler is no longer entirely on her own.

Kingsley arrives, and Bliss starts losing time

Duchesne gets a new student, and he is the engine of the middle of the book. Kingsley Martin is tall, confident, and dressed like he has already decided how the year will go. He reads a book that looks wrong, bound in something dark, and the text inside is about dark matter and things the Blue Bloods do not discuss. He also knows about the Silver Bloods, the fallen vampires who serve Lucifer, and he knows more than a new kid should.

Schuyler does not trust him. Bliss Llewellyn is drawn to him and suspicious of him at the same time. Mimi Force thinks he is interesting, which is never a good sign. Kingsley slides into the social order without effort, and the book uses him to make everyone else nervous.

The problem is that he is more compelling than the mystery around him. De la Cruz writes him with a lazy confidence, and he says half of what he means and watches people fill in the rest. Every time he leaves a room I wanted him back.

Around him, young Blue Bloods are dying. The deaths are not a clean pattern. They are strange, half explained, and connected to the Silver Bloods in a way the adults refuse to name. Bliss begins to suspect Kingsley, and her suspicion is reasonable, which makes it frustrating that almost nobody listens to her. The adults treat the deaths as a public relations problem first and a murder investigation second. A new boy with bad manners and a strange book is easier to dismiss than a pattern of bodies.

Bliss is the character who grew the most between books. In Blue Bloods she was the new girl from Texas, eager and a little lost. Here she is scared. She loses time. She comes back to herself in places she does not remember walking to, with dirt on her shoes or a taste in her mouth she cannot place.

She dreams of a beast with silver and crimson eyes. The image repeats, and each time it feels less like a dream and more like a memory she is not allowed to keep. She starts to wonder whether the thing she is afraid of is outside her or inside her, and the book is smart enough not to answer that yet.

Her boyfriend Dylan Ward disappeared in the first book and is presumed dead, killed by a Silver Blood. Bliss cannot let him go. She keeps looking for signs that he survived, and the book keeps giving her just enough to keep hoping. At one point a masked stranger pulls her out of danger, and she cannot see his face. She wants it to be Dylan. The book does not confirm it.

This thread is the creepiest thing in Masquerade, and it is also the one that feels most carefully built. Her fear is written from the inside. She does not know if she is going crazy or who to tell, and the adults treat her like a child with an overactive imagination.

I kept waiting for someone to take her seriously. Very few people do, and that is the point. Bliss is the person in the story who notices, and the story keeps punishing her for noticing.

Forbidden spells and a trial by blood

Mimi decides that Schuyler has to go. The immediate reason is Jack. Mimi is bound to her twin brother, and the bond is supposed to be permanent, and Jack keeps looking at Schuyler in a way that Mimi cannot stand. Kingsley encourages her, which is exactly what a person like Kingsley would do.

So Mimi uses magic she is not supposed to touch. The spell is meant to hurt Schuyler. It goes wrong in the worst possible way, and something else comes through: a Silver Blood is released, and a Blue Blood warden is killed.

The Blue Bloods respond with a blood trial. The details are murky, but the stakes are clear. Mimi could be severely punished. Schuyler, of all people, is the one who can prove what happened, because she drinks Mimi's blood and reads her memories. That lets her see the intent behind the act. What she finds is spite, jealousy, and recklessness, but not a plan to kill a warden.

Testifying for Mimi is a strange choice for Schuyler, and the book does not make it easy. Schuyler hates her, and she also knows that executing a girl for an accident would be a lie dressed as justice. The trial is rushed, but the emotional beat lands: Schuyler has to argue for the person who tried to kill her.

Kingsley and his family flee the city soon after, without a real confrontation.

The weakness in Schuyler's blood

Here is the part I found most interesting and least developed. Schuyler's mixed blood leaves her weak and unstable. She is not a normal Blue Blood and she is not human, and her body cannot sustain itself on the small sips that work for everyone else. She needs a human familiar, someone who will let her feed properly through the Sacred Kiss.

Lawrence suggests Oliver. Of course he does. Oliver has been in love with Schuyler for two books, and he has been her Conduit since the beginning. On paper it is the obvious answer.

When the moment comes, Oliver refuses. His reason is that she is not herself. He says it plainly, and it lands like a door closing. He is not rejecting her blood. He is refusing to be chosen by a version of her that is desperate and frightened and not thinking clearly.

I have gone back and forth on this scene. One reading is that Oliver is protecting her from a decision she cannot consent to properly. Another is that he is making a medical crisis about his own feelings. The book does not resolve it. Their relationship is left hanging, which is honest and also maddening.

The Four Hundred Ball and the mask

The social climax is the Four Hundred Ball, the coven's annual gala. Everyone dresses up. The old families arrive in cars that cost more than houses. The ball is where the Blue Bloods perform being human for one another, and De la Cruz has fun with the clothes and the seating charts.

Mimi, being Mimi, organizes an exclusive after party for the teenagers. It is masked. It is invitation only. It is exactly the kind of event that makes a fifteen year old feel like the whole world is happening in a room she cannot get into.

Schuyler goes. At the party a masked vampire pulls her close and kisses her. She assumes it is Jack. Later she is not so sure. That doubt is the point. The mask makes the kiss both intimate and anonymous, and the book uses it to keep the romance unresolved.

The ball chapters are the best stretch of the book, because the setting gives everyone something to do. Mimi gets to be a hostess and a monster at the same time, and Schuyler gets to stand at the edge of a party and want something she cannot name.

The ending then piles on reveals. A tortured vampire returns, barely able to speak. The Martins, who have been lurking at the edge of the story, turn out to have been pawns. And the biggest one: one of the Blue Blood families is secretly harboring a Silver Blood. The book does not tell you which family. It just makes clear that the threat is inside the house.

What works and what does not

The best thing about Masquerade is how much it commits to the mess. Schuyler is not a chosen one who gets a clean power upgrade. She is a sick girl with a grandfather who barely likes her and a crush on a boy who belongs to someone else, and the book keeps her at the level of a teenager even while the plot turns into a war between angelic factions.

The weakest thing is structure. The Venice trip promises a quest and delivers a refusal. The trial promises a courtroom drama and delivers a chapter. Kingsley promises a villain and leaves early. De la Cruz is very good at opening doors and less interested in walking through them.

Mimi is the other surprise. She could have been a cardboard mean girl, and instead she is the most entertaining person on the page. Her jealousy is petty, her magic is reckless, and she never apologizes, and the book is better for letting her be awful.

The romance is deliberately frustrating. Jack pulls Schuyler close and then pushes her away, and the reason is not only Mimi. It is the bond, and duty, and the fact that he is far older than he looks. I do not think the book earns every reversal, but it does make the longing feel real.

There is also a quiet theme about consent. Oliver says no. Schuyler drinks Mimi's blood to prove a truth Mimi did not want told, and the book keeps showing what happens when people take without asking.

The new Regis and the new threat

The last stretch is all politics. Lawrence wins the White Vote and becomes Regis, replacing Charles Force. It is a strange victory. Lawrence spent years in exile and does not like people, and now he is in charge of them.

Charles Force does not take it well. He tries to gain legal custody of Schuyler, or to adopt her outright. The move is chilling because it is so ordinary. He does not send monsters. He sends lawyers. After a book of spells and blood, the threat becomes paperwork, and that is somehow worse.

It also reframes everything that came before. Charles has been in the background the whole time, the father of Jack and Mimi, a man with a perfect public face. The custody attempt suggests he wants Schuyler for a reason, and the book ends before we learn it.

So Masquerade is a middle book in the honest sense. It moves pieces and deepens the world, and it leaves almost every romantic question open.

I came away liking it more than Blue Bloods and trusting it less. The set pieces are better and the plot is looser, but the image of a masked party full of people who have known each other for centuries stayed with me longer than the reveals did.

If you read the first one and wondered whether the series had more to say, this is the book that answers yes, and then changes the subject.

FAQ

Is Masquerade the second Blue Bloods book?

Yes. Hyperion published it in 2007 as book two, and it begins after Cordelia Van Alen's death at the end of Blue Bloods.

Who is Kingsley Martin?

He is a new student at Duchesne who knows far more about the Silver Bloods than he should, and Bliss suspects him of the recent deaths.

Does Schuyler choose Oliver as her familiar?

No. Oliver refuses when the moment comes, saying she is not herself, and the book leaves their relationship unresolved.