Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Blood & Honey

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin

5 reviews

cait's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

Looking at the average rating, it’s clear that Blood & Honey is the least popular book of the Serpent & Dove series, but I actually liked it more than the first book, so I gave it 3.5 stars. I can’t even really say why, probably because I got more attached to the characters and the world.

After the events of the last book, Lou and her friends are fleeing from Morgane and realize that they need strong allies to defeat her. For this, Lou, and Reid part ways to convince different groups to join an alliance which I wasn’t the biggest fan of. I still had the feeling that a lot of things happened, even though not everything furthered the main plot or was fully understandable; I definitely wanted to know what would happen next. Nevertheless, there were some story elements I didn’t like as much, like the werewolves, but some that I enjoyed quite a lot, like Lou’s

Spoiler

corruption arc

Of course, we need a silly third arc conflict between Reid and Lou that is then replaced by a more serious conflict where

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Morgane kidnaps Célie and our squad needs to come for her rescue. It was quite obvious that Ansel would follow them and die at the end, so his death had not the impact on me it probably supposed to had

. But all in all, I really liked the dramatic finale, even though there was a deus ex machina towards the end, which was a bit unsatisfying, just like the fact that

Spoiler

Morgane escaped again

In general, I enjoy the magic system and the fact that they have to give something in exchange to use the magic. The circus setting introduced in this book was nice as well. The world building though is not perfect, since too often, there are terms used from our world, like “month” or the like. Besides this, I had some problems with the writing; some of the similes used are a bit weird and the humour is too childish in parts as well.

Looking at the characters, I still like both Reid and Lou. In some moments, Lou is actually funny, and Reid is cute, especially how awkward he is with the circus people. Of course, there’s a random reason why they’re not allowed to get closer to each other and there’s quite some miscommunication between them, but I liked them. The rest of the squad was nice as well, besides Claud, who just annoyed me. I also really like Beau and Célie and I’m quite happy that

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Ansel x Coco didn’t become a thing since he’s underage

. Besides them though, I mixed up some of the characters since they’re not too individual.

Like I’ve written at the beginning, Blood & Honey wasn’t for me as bad as many people make it out to be which surprised me. There are still likable characters and a general intriguing world and story. I hope that the story will come to a satisfying conclusion with Gods & Monsters.

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