Reviews tagging 'Death'

Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin

62 reviews

selestre's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Cursing, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Religious bigotry, Self harm, and Violence

Minor: Vomit and Sexual content

taka_kateryna's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Blood, and Death

mixed_emoticon's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

TLDR Review for Blood & Honey

4/5 stars

Highlights:
📚 Book 2 in a Trilogy
🪟 multiple character perspectives
🇫🇷 French Setting
✨ Magic
🎙️ Witty Banter
🎭 Secrecy and dishonesty
🥸 Identity
💝 Devotion
🕊️ Diplomacy
💔 Heartbreak
👿 Corruption
🔪 Betrayal
🩸 there's (still) graphic murder, dying, and death

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Child death

Minor: Blood

kitsunasaur's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I originally dnf’d this book, due to it being frustratingly slow and boring for 85%, but I wanted to finish the series. I liked the first book so much and I hear the third book is better. Rereading it as an audio book from the beginning helped a lot. The acting really helped the slow parts and made some characters more lovable then before. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Grief, Toxic relationship, Murder, Violence, Religious bigotry, Vomit, Fire/Fire injury, and Torture

Moderate: Sexual content

Minor: Kidnapping

theintrovertsbooks's review against another edition

emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, Racism, Xenophobia, Hate crime, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Violence, Cursing, Death, and Grief

Moderate: Torture, Child death, Confinement, Genocide, Kidnapping, War, Stalking, Religious bigotry, Body horror, Gore, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Cannibalism, and Child abuse

Minor: Alcohol

lmmw230494's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Violence, Religious bigotry, and Murder

tallyp's review

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Torture, Gore, Stalking, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Death of parent, Cursing, Child death, Blood, Religious bigotry, Body horror, and Violence

bzliz's review

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

People on booktok give this a hard time which I understand but I don’t think it’s fully justified. Blood & Honey is not as action packed as Serpent & Dove (most of the real action takes place in the last 150ish pages) but it conveys some pretty serious character development that I think will be important going into the third book. 

Lou’s journey is so interesting. She has escaped certain death at the hands of her mother twice now and she’s flirting with the darkness inside her. Even after overhearing the people she loves discussing her behavior and choices, she doesn’t realize what she’s doing and is becoming a pretty unreliable narrator. It takes a major incident (

Spoiler

unintentionally setting Coco on fire

) for her to realize what a slippery slope she’s on and try to turn it around. She’s also accumulated 3 matagots- who are attracted to lost souls- when it’s unusual for someone to attract more than one. Honestly, I want her to gather a whole army of these adorable little shadow messenger spies. 

Reid is also going through it. He’s grappling with the revelation that he’s a witch and the utter self-loathing that comes with that, plus his known parentage, PLUS his grief for the Archbishop who was practically a father to him. He makes a minor attempt to bond with Beau and I can definitely see them building a brotherly relationship despite Beau’s warnings against romanticizing the idea of their father and siblings. Reid also starts taking steps to atone for past actions that he thought were right at the time. He will be the light to balance out Lou’s darkness. 

Coco also got some time to shine and I loved it. The book is titled for her magic. She is the crew’s in with the Dame Rouge and she is one of Lou’s tethers to keep her from descending further. She also finally kisses Ansel and subsequently breaks his heart which leads to a beautiful scene with Lou that really showcases the strength of their bond. I really appreciate the relationship between Lou and Coco; too many fantasy stories don’t maintain F/F relationships once the love interest comes in. 

One tiny little side question I have is: what happened to Bas? Maybe I blinked and missed it but did he survive after the bandits attacked the troupe? Did they just leave him there? I don’t remember any mention of what happened to him at all. 

Discussion of major character death under the spoiler. Don’t read if you don’t want to know and stop scrolling because others have not bothered to hide it. 

Spoiler

Madame Labelle is captive after Reid and Beau break out of their father’s prison but that is not enough to give their mission serious stakes. She’s the oldest member of their crew and Reid still feels resentful toward her for giving him up. To really feel the devastation of Morgane’s reign of terror, someone beloved has to die and that person is Ansel. He was the baby of the group and the most innocent. He’s their little golden retriever and they absolutely have to lose that force of pure goodness to get rid of Morgane.

Over all, I did enjoy this book and I’m looking forward to the next one. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Vomit, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Cannibalism

what_karla_reads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, and Murder

Moderate: Religious bigotry

Minor: Sexual content and Cursing

karelidz's review

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Quite good, although ofc most of the book is them traveling and figuring out how to solve the problem, and only until the very end do we get a battle, but it was quite good at developing the characters a bit more and their stories, and idk, overall I liked it enough for me to want to continue with the next one.
I think i'd say that it wasn't as good as the first one, but maybe because by this point the world has already been established and there's not many new thing added to it in this one.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death and Grief