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A review by xxivo
How to Sell Your Blood & Fall in Love by D.N. Bryn
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
I received an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.
This book.... oh my fucking god this book. I love it. A lot. A whole lot. I feel incredibly blessed that this book exists.
So this book has great queer rep, but at the same time also has disabled rep and that made it so much better straight from the start. I saw things of myself in Clementine his neurodivergence, I saw things in Justin with his chronic pain. But I also related to their queerness and those of the side characters. The way the conversations happened around these topics were like a breath of fresh air. It made me feel so so warm and just incredibly accepted. I needed this book before I even knew I was missing it.
Clementine as a character was such a small little bean that I wanted to protect at all costs, and thank god that Justin was there because he pretty soon felt the same way. Justin is someone who tries to protect everyone at all costs, including the cost on his life. This is self destructive for sure, but as someone chronically ill I do recognize that part of going past your boundaries in that way. So yes, I wanted to protect and keep him safe too. I came to love them both a lot during this book.
Rambles aside this book is just as great a slow burn as the previous book was. Both of them feeling possesive of the other early on while not really figuring out why. Especially with Clem this was complicated because of his sexual identity and I loved how this was written. The way that the taste of Justins blood was used to very visually show how Clem's attraction started to blossom was something that was beautifully done.
Both Clem's and Justin's relationship with their respective families takes up a lot of space in the book too. The families are a stark contrast which highlighted the troubles on Clem's side even more. Because of his neurodivergence Clem is forced to do a lot of things that feel quite horrible to him. He however hasn't learned yet either how to navigate that while protecting his boundaries. This journey of him growing into that was wonderful to follow and great character development.
It wouldn't be a review from me without mentioning if I did cry or not, and yes I definitely did. There were some specific moments in the book where some characters said things that hit me deep because of the relatable rep mentioned in the beginning.
This book was just amazing and I hope more people will pick it up.
This book.... oh my fucking god this book. I love it. A lot. A whole lot. I feel incredibly blessed that this book exists.
So this book has great queer rep, but at the same time also has disabled rep and that made it so much better straight from the start. I saw things of myself in Clementine his neurodivergence, I saw things in Justin with his chronic pain. But I also related to their queerness and those of the side characters. The way the conversations happened around these topics were like a breath of fresh air. It made me feel so so warm and just incredibly accepted. I needed this book before I even knew I was missing it.
Clementine as a character was such a small little bean that I wanted to protect at all costs, and thank god that Justin was there because he pretty soon felt the same way. Justin is someone who tries to protect everyone at all costs, including the cost on his life. This is self destructive for sure, but as someone chronically ill I do recognize that part of going past your boundaries in that way. So yes, I wanted to protect and keep him safe too. I came to love them both a lot during this book.
Rambles aside this book is just as great a slow burn as the previous book was. Both of them feeling possesive of the other early on while not really figuring out why. Especially with Clem this was complicated because of his sexual identity and I loved how this was written. The way that the taste of Justins blood was used to very visually show how Clem's attraction started to blossom was something that was beautifully done.
Both Clem's and Justin's relationship with their respective families takes up a lot of space in the book too. The families are a stark contrast which highlighted the troubles on Clem's side even more. Because of his neurodivergence Clem is forced to do a lot of things that feel quite horrible to him. He however hasn't learned yet either how to navigate that while protecting his boundaries. This journey of him growing into that was wonderful to follow and great character development.
It wouldn't be a review from me without mentioning if I did cry or not, and yes I definitely did. There were some specific moments in the book where some characters said things that hit me deep because of the relatable rep mentioned in the beginning.
This book was just amazing and I hope more people will pick it up.