A review by dlrosebyh
Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

adventurous emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Bree's only goal was to learn the truth about her mother's death.  She joined the Legendborn Order, a covert organization descended from King Arthur's knights, only to learn that she possessed ancestoral might. Bree has changed into a new person now.

However, the Order's long-running conflict with demons is reaching a lethal apex. And Nick, the Legendborn boy who captured Bree's heart, has been taken hostage. The Regents, who control the Order, forbid Bree from fighting. As the living anchor for the magic that maintains the Legendborn cycle, she is a mysterious girl with unheard-of power who needs to be protected.

Bree and her friends are forced to flee in order to save Nick as the Regents make it clear they will stop at nothing to conceal the conflict. However, there are adversaries everywhere, Bree's own abilities are unpredictable and lethal, and she is powerless to stop her developing attraction to Selwyn, the wizard sworn to defend Nick to the last end. Bree must learn to harness her powers from the ancestors who used them first—without losing herself in the process—if she is to have any chance of protecting herself and the people she loves.

I anticipated that this book would be one of my favorites, but I did not anticipate that it would top my list of favorites for the year 2023. It's just the way my YA fantasy should be. When Sel eventually confessed to Bree, I was shouting, which is unusual for me because I detest love triangles. Given that we didn't get to see much of Nick in this book and since the tension was so palpable throughout, I'm now rooting for Sel and Bree. I like having enemies to lovers from time to time.

I practically held my breath the entire nearly 600 pages of this book because I couldn't put it down. I don't know if it's because I finished this book at four in the morning, but the conclusion was so unexpected. And the fact that it has a cliffhanger? So you're telling me the release of the next book won't be until 2024? I'm about to do some nefarious things.

I understand that many people didn't enjoy how action-packed it was, but I did. Because a different problem will surface in every single chapter, it was almost criminal to put the book down. You need Alice to take a break, else you can't. She's such a comic relief character, which is why I adore her. 

All of the relationships in this book—romantic, friendshipal, family, etc.—were so excellent and well-developed that they increased my love for the characters. Despite the fact that Nick was barely mentioned in this book, it did a wonderful job at winning me over because I wasn't really fond of him in the first. As Sel previously stated, I believed him to be some white supremacist bullshit (and a nepotism baby).

I also felt the book had a fantastic plot; it was really action-packed (I know some people didn't like it much, but I did), and while it was a little bit repetitive at times, I thought it was handled very well since, in my opinion, the repetition made the story more vivid. This kind of repetition provided more details about Bree's character, which I appreciated. It's not your standard repetition where it seems like the author was pressing ctrl c + ctrl v on their computer.

But in addition to the story and the people, I really adored how the universe essentially grew. Since we were just learning the fundamentals of being a Legendborn in the first book, it was kind of just a 20% zoom out. However, in this one, because it was action-packed, characters were fleeing from one location to another, which caused the world to expand.

Obviously from the cliffhangers, I do have some occurring questions. Hopefully, they can be answered in the next book of the series.
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