A review by yadira315
Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker

2.25

I was so excited to read this book as the description and concept of the book sounded really interesting but unfortunately, the book was just not for me. One of the first things I struggled with was the multiple point of views. We have our two main characters that have POV‘s but then there’s multiple side characters that also get their own POV throughout the book and the main problem with that was that the perspectives will constantly change so the MC’s POV would be in first person, present tense, and then some of the side characters would either be in third person or past tense, and that would constantly take me out of the story and would be jarring. This also made it confusing to follow, which character was witch, and the relationship between the characters.  I also did not like it because we have so many characters involved with the stories. The relationship was not properly flushed out, and there was no room for the characters to have proper development.  So many things are thrown at you so many life altering event in a matter of days that the characters really did not have a lot of time to properly communicate, despite the length of the book. 

I had to keep in mind that the characters are teenagers, so they had very strong feelings for the people that they were meeting and their relationship towards each other. However, the adults in the book were completely ridiculous at times, and there was a lot of inconsistencies between their relationships at points they would not trust their family members because of something that they did in the past, but then would go and completely trust a random stranger that was just introduced to the book.  

I really enjoyed how there was great queer and mental health representation throughout the book. The author challenges, a lot of heavy topics throughout the book, such as homophobia, lynching, violence and complicated relationships. The author constructed a great magic system but I found that the execution was not there. I gave the book 2.5 stars. 

 Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC. 
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