Reviews

The Bloodshed Of The Betrayed by A. L. Slade

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pagesbyheidi's review

5.0

emotional and absolutely incredible

Something about this book was simply just average.

The concept of a queer fallen angels story is stunning, an amazing idea even, but this book just didn’t live up to what I expected. Laramie is tested with emotions, but when she fails the test she follows the human she fell in love with. This sounds like an awesome concept, but reading the book felt like a workout to understand.

I’m a reader with complete aphantasia (the inability to visualize), and this book love to describe the most small details with depth. It felt as though I was being force fed descriptions I couldn’t understand for over half the book. I had even gotten a friend to try and describe certain details to me when I was completely overwhelmed by the page long descriptions. I understand that this is a me issue but it’s easy to get lost in all the words.

I also felt as though the book was oddly paced. It felt like watching House of Anubis. The first half of the of the episode was resolving the cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode and moving on to creating a new cliffhanger that can’t be resolved in the rest of the episode. Bloodshed of the Betrayed is great for binge reading because of this, but terrible for spaced out reading, like what I did.

I’d also like to point out how quickly relationships seem to move in this book. The book shorter than others and I think that the relationship and character building was severely affected because of this. Laramie falls in love with Maggie at first sight, and Magda falls in love with Laramie after she’s died, but that happened incredibly quickly. I was almost concerned with how fast Maggie gained feelings for Laramie and her actions at the end of the book. After being thrown around in Lucifer’s fight with Laramie and God/Az, you’d think she’d be repelled by the idea of her new life, but she isn’t? She was just tossed into a new world and God is nice to get a few times and she’s okay with it? It felt unrealistic and sort of annoying to read.

I don’t think there’s a good way to end this other than just saying that the book felt average. There wasn’t anything that made it stand out to me. I’d read this book if you were bored and wanted something that moved quickly. It’s also good to get you into a binge reading mood.

violetflower23's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

2.5

alianimates22's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

amy_sashaaa's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

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

1.0

dragonsbookcave's review

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dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Enotially soul destroying. I loved it

Content Warnings

zemightyenby's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

2.0

Content Warnings

iuliatr's review

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3.0

Sigh... Now
I came across this book on TikTok and even though my tastes don't usually align with people there, I really liked the premise and thought "why not give it a try?".
What I expected? A story where Laramie blends with other people and protects Maggie by getting close to her and they fall in love for real. Basically a sweet story where "love wins".
And I'm not against new plots since this one could be a little cliche, but I didn't expect this .
WARNING! Mild spoilers ahead but I'll try to flag them as such.

Not an ounce of happiness in this book. I wish I was kidding but no, it was just pure suffering from start to finish and the ending made me confused.

Spoiler

Everyone dying is a thing, let's say it was written to emphasize the suffering is putting Maggie through. But the MCs didn't even meet properly? How do you convince me this is a WLW when all I got was an one-sided insta-love?

I feel like this was supposed to be an introduction but I don't see how it will work since it didn't exactly make me excited to read the second book or whatever the author plans.

Now, don't get me wrong. The writing style is beautiful, easy to understand and there weren't many pages at all (this comes from a declared danmei fan, I'm used to thousands of pages so this was a quick read). The author is certainly talented but I'm just more of a happy ending kinda girl.

3/5*