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A review by honeyreads1066
Blood to Poison by Mary Watson
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
This book follows 17-year-old Savannah. She is cursed, a curse of anger that follows the woman in her family from generation to generation. The curse will kill her eventually as these cursed women suffer from early deaths. Savannah is determined to break this curse but there are witches in the underbelly of cape town that want to steal its power for themselves.
I had high hopes for this book. I love books that are set in places that aren't usually written about and imbed culture and traditions within the so I was extremely excited to get through his.
I guess the things that I didn't like were the fact that it felt like such a long book and also the romance between the main characters. There's no way to say this nicely but simply there were parts where I just got very bored. The book had a sense of urgency and a time limit of sorts but I felt that that time limit wasn't something that worried Savannah at all. She seemed more focussed on things I didn't particularly care about and it didn't mesh well with the sense of urgency the book seemed to have.
In regards to the romance, I just wasn't particularly convinced of it. I see how they could be very close friends, but I struggled to believe that they were THAT into each other. I personally just didn't feel that tension or that kind of want between them.
I did love the ending though, I thought the book was going a particular way and felt very smart when the character came to the same conclusions I had only to have curveball after curveball is thrown at me at the end. I was in a rush to keep reading because not only was I shocked but also really wanted to see what else I had gotten wrong.
I also LOVE the setting. Watson has a brilliant authors note at the beginning of the book which really gave some context to the world I was entering. But mostly I just loved reading about South Africa and cape town, I love the way Watson described it and that alone has made me want to read her other books.
I would recommend this book, overall I did really like it, I enjoyed buts of it and I loved the magical world I was thrust into. Also for once, I didn't dislike Savannah, I didn't agree with some of her decisions but I wasn't supposed to, I actually really liked her and just wanted her to succeed.
I had high hopes for this book. I love books that are set in places that aren't usually written about and imbed culture and traditions within the so I was extremely excited to get through his.
I guess the things that I didn't like were the fact that it felt like such a long book and also the romance between the main characters. There's no way to say this nicely but simply there were parts where I just got very bored. The book had a sense of urgency and a time limit of sorts but I felt that that time limit wasn't something that worried Savannah at all. She seemed more focussed on things I didn't particularly care about and it didn't mesh well with the sense of urgency the book seemed to have.
In regards to the romance, I just wasn't particularly convinced of it. I see how they could be very close friends, but I struggled to believe that they were THAT into each other. I personally just didn't feel that tension or that kind of want between them.
I did love the ending though, I thought the book was going a particular way and felt very smart when the character came to the same conclusions I had only to have curveball after curveball is thrown at me at the end. I was in a rush to keep reading because not only was I shocked but also really wanted to see what else I had gotten wrong.
I also LOVE the setting. Watson has a brilliant authors note at the beginning of the book which really gave some context to the world I was entering. But mostly I just loved reading about South Africa and cape town, I love the way Watson described it and that alone has made me want to read her other books.
I would recommend this book, overall I did really like it, I enjoyed buts of it and I loved the magical world I was thrust into. Also for once, I didn't dislike Savannah, I didn't agree with some of her decisions but I wasn't supposed to, I actually really liked her and just wanted her to succeed.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence and Murder