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A review by wynonnar
Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin
1.0
1 star
I finished this book entirely out of spite.
I should have DNF'd this book 30% of the way through it when I couldn't care about any of the characters. My biggest struggle through this novel is all of the progress and character progression we got out of Serpent and Dove was gone in this second book.
Reid is enraging, he seems to only care about Lou when the book wants him to fit the narrative of the protective husband, any other time he is disgusted with her like he was when he first married her in Serpent and Dove and that was infuriating. It seemed like their romance was supposed to be a large part of the plot but there was nothing romantic about their relationship, he was mean and Lou was immature and annoying. No actually, Reid was just as immature and annoying as Lou was because as he knows he has magic and could protect everyone with his magic he chooses to be disgusted with not only this wife he said he loved at the end of Serpent and Dove but also himself, and I know it's supposed to be because he has been raised to hate witches but he literally does not have any character progression until the last 10% of the book and by then, it's too damn late. The pacing of this entire series is also insanely frustrating the first 70% of both books were just so boring, no characters are interesting enough to keep you enthralled, there are no big emotional moments (minus the one with Ansel and Coco) to make you care, and there is nothing happening in the plot. They were traveling with no progression through the vast majority of the book. It's like a video game where you just have to keep going back and forth to make any progress at all.
The writing style is also really weird, somehow not YA, too immature to be NA, and the author seems to still be coming into who they are as a writer. This book was just frustrating all the way through, not to mention utterly forgettable.
I finished this book entirely out of spite.
I should have DNF'd this book 30% of the way through it when I couldn't care about any of the characters. My biggest struggle through this novel is all of the progress and character progression we got out of Serpent and Dove was gone in this second book.
Reid is enraging, he seems to only care about Lou when the book wants him to fit the narrative of the protective husband, any other time he is disgusted with her like he was when he first married her in Serpent and Dove and that was infuriating. It seemed like their romance was supposed to be a large part of the plot but there was nothing romantic about their relationship, he was mean and Lou was immature and annoying. No actually, Reid was just as immature and annoying as Lou was because as he knows he has magic and could protect everyone with his magic he chooses to be disgusted with not only this wife he said he loved at the end of Serpent and Dove but also himself, and I know it's supposed to be because he has been raised to hate witches but he literally does not have any character progression until the last 10% of the book and by then, it's too damn late. The pacing of this entire series is also insanely frustrating the first 70% of both books were just so boring, no characters are interesting enough to keep you enthralled, there are no big emotional moments (minus the one with Ansel and Coco) to make you care, and there is nothing happening in the plot. They were traveling with no progression through the vast majority of the book. It's like a video game where you just have to keep going back and forth to make any progress at all.
The writing style is also really weird, somehow not YA, too immature to be NA, and the author seems to still be coming into who they are as a writer. This book was just frustrating all the way through, not to mention utterly forgettable.