Reviews

The Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport

Only show reviews with written explanations

amandanicoletta's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

chefkf's review against another edition

Go to review page

Ikenna - extremely smart, raised by her grandpa to be hyper aware of people and her surrounds. Also Ikenna - grandpas bff told me Reed killed him with zero evidence, just a hunch. He totally did it! Repeats the whole “Reed killed my grandpa” line every other paragraph. Could already tell Reed was most likely going to be the love interest, and the male friend was most likely a traitor. I wish we would have gotten more of the trials sooner, and a lot less “my grandpa is dead and I don’t know who killed him”. So much potential for a great story, poorly executed. It was like the author couldn’t decide if she wanted a murder mystery or dystopian trial book and she said why not write both plots very Mid?!

chrisb913's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was a thrilling read. The high stakes of the trials mixed with the last 25% of the story had me on the edge of my seat the majority of the time. I loved how Davenport did not shy away from the gore/brutalness of displaying the trials for what they were. I found myself having a slew of emotions about the depiction of characters, which always makes for a fantastic journey for me.

My one complaint is that this should be a trilogy but the publisher forced her to condense it and it shows. Once we got to the end of the trials at about 75%, you can see the switch in the plot to condense 3 books into 2. Because of this, I felt some of the backstory on the other countries suffered and we were left to kinda of scratch our heads and piece together what was going on.

Overall I loved this book and I'm excited to read book 2 and future books from Davenport.

Content Warnings