Reviews with content warning for Blood - Crown and Bones

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Crown and Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout

85 reviews

sabrina22's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

theespressoedition's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

*looks back at the notes I sent my friend while reading* Aha! Yes, here we go...

This has been my favorite book of the series so far. There's a kind of comfort that's settled in between Casteel and Poppy now that they're married - and despite the insane cliffhanger that book two left us on, things were cleared up relatively quickly at the beginning of this book.

Okay, so "cleared up" is maybe the wrong term considering the insanity that followed - and that's where I got a little revved up. Not because I was disliking the story so much as I was constantly confused. There was a lot of information overload in this installation. I found myself constantly looking up the terms because I lost track of the differences between "deities" and "gods" or I lost track of the character names because it seems like someone new is always being introduced. In addition to that, there was a lot of back-and-forth with who the characters were, who they were related to, what they were spawns of, whether they were Ascended, Descenters, masked, Wolven, vamprys, etc. I literally couldn't keep up.

At a certain point, I just decided to kind of say "screw it" and enjoy the story for what it was rather than trying to piece together every little bit of information because, let's be real, JLA is totally gonna throw half of it out the window in the next novel and we'll have to relearn it all again. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the style she's chosen for this series. Everything can be undone or retold and you have to get used to never really knowing for sure whether something is set in stone.

Just like the other two books, there were some irritants for me, such as the repetition:
1) Poppy likes violence
2) Poppy has a lot of questions
We get it. Can Kieren or Casteel acknowledge anything else? Thanks.

There was a lot of sexual content - maybe even more than the others, but at this point it's not as appealing to me. Not that it was "appealing" before, so much as it was new. Now it's not and it felt like she was reaching a lot of the time. I found myself just flipping through pages until those scenes ended because I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

I love Kieren. Honestly, if we could get some books just about him, I think I'd be happy. He's sarcastic and caring - and even though he pretty much only ribs Poppy about how inquisitive she is, he's probably the most likable character in the books.

While I can't say these are my favorite books ever or anything, I definitely stay interested throughout the entire time I'm reading, which encourages me to continue the series. So far, I haven't had anything really make me think I need to stop where I am. I'm not bored and I'm not disinterested, so even though I'm not obsessed, I'll be picking up the next book.

Content Warnings

weraamanda's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

1.75

It just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it? When I had read almost half of this book I realized that it wasn't going to be good. I was about to put it down and never pick it up again but I had one motivator to finish it: Kieran. So, I finished it. And it was bad. Definitely disappointed, but sadly not surprised.

I don't like how spEciAL Poppy suddenly is. Like yeah, sure, we got indicators that something like this was going to happen, but she very conveniently started to gain all of these random powers out of nowhere when she needed them the most. It was stupid. I might also just inherently dislike characters that turn out to be extremely special and rare and they have all these cool powers that make no sense, but still. I hated it.

I was also quite pissed about all the wolven bonds breaking and them starting to protect Poppy, because it just isn't worth it, you know? She's annoying, and I don't like the fact that now all these lovely characters are at risk of literally dying for this girl. I wasn't able to bring myself to care about her, so the whole thing really annoyed me.

Even though I deeply care about Kieran, the Q&A conversations between him and Poppy started to get on my nerves. Poppy was constantly asking questions and Kieran was always saying something like "No one's surprised that you have questions." Like okay, we get it, Poppy can't shut the hell up, but it was pointless to repeat the same thing over and over again. The author also pointed out that Casteel, indeed, still smells like spice and pine. Not as many times as she did in A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire, but still. It seems like repetition is something Armentrout holds very close to her heart.

I wasn't into the smut either, mostly skipped those parts. It just keeps getting progressively worse, ever since the second book. I am: disappointed. Might be also because blood play and vampire sex aren't really for me, so I didn't find reading about these things particularly enjoyable.

So, what was good about this book, then? Kieran, Delano, Emil and Vonetta saved this whole dumpster fire of a book. At least saved it to a level where I felt comfortable giving it a little bit more than just one star. The Crown of Gilded Bones was still a pretty shitty read, though, so not sure was it worth it. It never ceases to amaze me how Armentrout is able to write a book that's 600+ pages long but has absolutely no valuable information in it whatsoever. This was so incredibly slow-paced and boring. There's so many things she could've done with this book, but instead of those, she decided to info dump us once again and made the characters have these long, pointless conversations that didn't lead us anywhere. But, I guess she tried. It just wasn't enough for me.

Content Warnings

mmbc's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous slow-paced

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

3.0

Too long and too slow. Writing has improved marginally from the other books but there are still confusing moments. The book needed a better editor to make it easier to read and to cut out unnecessary bits. I feel like the twists and new characters are introduced just for the sake of dragging out the plot, whereas it could have be wrapped up neatly at the end of this book. 3 MORE books?! The romance was well written but there was less of it in this book… so I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the next one.

Content Warnings

okaycelia's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

vladtheimpaler's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional funny lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

brynn_books's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.5

I can't believe I actually managed to finish this book.

These books are so confusing. This is the third book and I still have no idea what's happening. The beginning part of the book was very slow. Honestly, I feel like some thing's happened very fast while others happened slowly. Yeah. I still have no idea what's going on.

I'm only reading this book for the romance aspect. The romance didn't disappoint. I love these two characters and their relationship has to be my favorite thing about this series.

Content Warnings