A review by melycp
Bound by Blood by Jessica M. Butler

3.5

I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did. It was actually pretty good. There are a few instances that I didn’t enjoy, one of which being a specific word that I really don’t like being used. But other than that, decent.

Compared to the first book in this series of standalones (all by different authors) this one is much longer and therefore has time for real character and story development. It seemed like their backgrounds were a little all over the place at times, but they made more sense in the end.

It was so refreshing to read a book about the fae where the human woman is older than the male fae. That like never happens. You don’t find out exactly how old Erryn is, but she says she is a few years older than Ryul’s 24. 

I weirdly really enjoyed the scenes where Erryn makes soup. It’s so mundane but I’ve always enjoyed cooking scenes in books, probably because I love food so much myself. I’m not, however, a big fan of soup.

The world-building was pretty decent and it was fun to learn about the different types of fae. I think these books are all set in the same world so it’s cool to expand on the first one – assuming I’m reading these in the correct order, but I don’t think there is one.

The romance seems a little instalovey, but they do spend multiple evenings together, bonding over soup and whatnot. That makes this sound really boring, but you do find yourself rooting for them. The whole ‘I love you’ curse is weird though. I didn’t (and still don’t) fully understand what it is. 

Overall Bound by Blood was a very decent standalone fantasy. I like that each book is by an indie author and it’s cool to have a large expanded universe. I’d recommend checking them out if you have Kindle Unlimited.