Anyone else here find this series when you were older?

When these books were published, I was already in my upper 20's, and I had recently restarted practicing Witchcraft years after I had started and stopped when I had still been in still in HS. Early in that time of restarting my practice, I had joined a Witchcraft FB group. It was led by someone that kept using terms like 'third former' etc, to describe themselves in their practice...terms that I had never heard of before in all of my time studying even the most classic Witchcraft texts. Someone (not me) asked them where they got these terms from, and they said that they were from the House of Night series, and that those books were the reason that they got into Witchcraft. I was intrigued, and checked out my local library where I found the first couple of books in the series. The vampire premise of the series almost kept me from reading Marked, but I figured if the series made someone else begin to practice Witchcraft, there must be something there. I was starved at this time for books that had "REAL" Witchcraft practices in them, just as Born-again Christians gobble up anything to do with Christianity, I too was ready to gobble up anything Witchcraft related!😂 (And you must remember...this was the early 2000's and fictional books like that were few and far-between!).
Well, of course, I became hooked! A Goddess-worshipping society of vampires, full moon rituals, and elemental affinitys? Awesome! I was totally hooked and binge-read most of the series in a row. I believe I stopped around book 9 or 10 (don't ask me titles. I don't know them in order), intending to "take a break" annnnddd...I never finished the series.😬 Now, its been many years later, and I'm now a woman in my 40's with lots of years as a practicing Witch, and I've decided to give them another go. I started rereading Marked this past week. And, well...Yes...there is A LOT of cringey things in it. It was definitely a book of its time (or not even of it's time). But I'm putting the blinders on to the things that are not as good..or...to be honest, acceptable...because I definitely know that there was a lot in the series that I remember fondly.

So, to make a long story short (I know, I know!🙄), I was wondering if anyone else discovered the series when you were older than its target age range and how did you feel about it the first time you read it? Did you read it around the time it was published, or more recently?