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melissaslibraryy's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I lovedddd this book and thought it was a great sequel to Belladonna and in my personal opinion, even better than the first book 🤠I enjoyed the murder mystery aspect and how several theories as the story progressed and the ones I got right have me very excited for the next installment of the series bc I cannot wait to see what the author has in store for the characters especially Blythe and Fate !! Wisteria is gonna be a new anticipated read this year and August needs to come ASAP!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug use, Misogyny, Sexism, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Confinement
Minor: Sexual content, Abortion, and Pregnancy
sinceraly's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
I will try my best to keep this review spoiler free. Anything considered a spoiler will be censored!
To no one's surprise but my own, I really liked Foxglove. Don't get me wrong, Adalyn Grace is a very talented author - it just so happens that I don't gravitate to these kinds of books in general. Though I loved Belladonna, I was afraid it was just catching lightning in a bottle and I wouldn't enjoy its sequel nearly as much. What I've learned, though, is that Grace is set to prove me wrong.
As always, the things I loved first:
Like the first novel, a great balance between plot and romance for the sake of romance.
I feel like I mention this in every review I do, but I'm not someone who is spectacularly into romance in a non-romance novel - by that, I mean I like romances, but only if I'm reading a book specifically for the romance, or one that considers itself a romance novel. I've been burned by many a book that got me invested in world building or plots that got set aside from a lackluster romance that failed to capture my attention. Belladonna did a great job with its romance too, especially since I loved Death almost as much as Signa does, but with the introduction of Fate, Death's brother, I was really scared of a love triangle that would lose almost all of the charm of the original romance.
Grace did a great job of handling this exact situation. Though there are times in the book where the main relationships settle into a vaguely-triangle shape, it's not enough to be annoying, and Signa remains respectably loyal to Death. It actually does a lot to make her a more likeable character, especially as she gains access to memories from Life, a sort of equal being to Fate and Death, whom I'm sure you can guess had powers over Life. See, Life was a former lover of Fate's, someone who died tragically at Death's hand for a very sympathetic reason, and really, the lynchpin of the whole story. Despite the fact that Signa is witness to many romantic and manipulative flashbacks to this life she doesn't remember, she holds strong to Death. It's not hard to wonder what might be, but she doesn't stray. I can respect that loyalty in a character. We don't like cheaters in this household, no sir.
Blythe was surprisingly a very bright spot in the book for me.
I loved Blythe's character and her development over the course of the novel. I feel like too often in books like these, authors forget what a reasonable and realistic reaction to some crazy supernatural shit might be. Having a character find out something that sounds completely mad to any regular person and respond accordingly with, "oh you're insane and I want you away from me," is something that feels straight up Correct, especially paired with the knowledge that said crazy person can kill and bring people back to life. Many second or third act conflicts like this can feel tiring and lazy, but in Blythe's case it made all the sense in the world that she wanted Signa away from the Hawthornes, and it made even more sense that she was both scared of and torn about her cousin. How do you react to information like "my cousin killed my brother, for seemingly no reason?"
Blythe offered an air of rationality that I think Signa can lack, sometimes. Blythe has no powers that she's aware of - all she has is her wits, her tongue, her mind. Despite this, she tries her best to fix things however she can, she stands up for what she believes in, and she does her best to take care of the people she cares about. Blythe is determined to make things work out, and it's why I think the ending is so satisfying. The fact that she takes on the marriage contract for Fate instead of Signa doesn't come out of left field; with the context she needs about the entire situation, Blythe understands that Signa will do anything - has done anything - for Blythe, and at that point, vice versa, as Blythe and Signa are equally loyal to their family. Blythe's commentary was biting, fun, and believable, and I really enjoyed switching to her perspective chapters in between a few of Signa's. It didn't feel like a chore to read her narrative, as it so often can in these situations.
I loved how unhinged Fate was.
Another fear I had going into this book was whether or not Fate was going to be Death V2. Death himself is a highly amusing character when he's given the commentary spotlight, but if I had to deal with an even more broody ~mysterious~ character than both Death and Signa, I might have wanted to throw the book and myself out of a window. However, I genuinely liked seeing Fate. He might be more complex of a character than Death, with a respect towards life (the concept, not the being) that matches Death's respect for, well, death. But unlike Death, Fate has had to deal with his own personal brand of love-related trauma in the form of Life's death, which, we learned from Death himself, was put off for too long, forcing her to go in a terrible, terrible way in the form of the Medieval Plague. This experience had rocked Fate's world so badly that he fractured at the seams, blaming Death for his troubles and being on the lookout for his lost love.
As the book goes on, Fate seems more and more crazed, obsessive, and ruthless. Unlike in Belladonna, where we see more of Death's gentle edges and soft shadows as the book goes on, Fate has the opposite effect in Foxglove - you only see the manic depressive terrors he's capable of, how he's crumbling to ruin as the book goes on, and I love that. Fate believes that Signa is the reincarnation of Life, and he's that much more determined to take her away from Death because of it, even if it means forcefully blackmailing her into marrying him just to save her family. He's not meant to be a good, reasonable figure here, and he's not apologetic of his plan, he is just outwitted. For a while, I hesitated to call Fate a villain, but that's what he is, just a particularly understandable and sympathetic one. He went from trying to fairly win her hand to straight up trying to force her into marriage. Fate is a total bitch and I'm personally very happy about that.
The ties between every main character was particularly well done.
Fate being Death’s brother, Signa and Blythe’s close cousinly bond, the depths of Death and Signa’s romance, the weird tension between Fate and Blythe, the toxic (mostly one sided) attraction between Signa and Fate - they’re all well described and believable. At no point in the book did a character do something and, in response, did I wrinkle my nose and say “well, that doesn’t seem believable.” Grace had set up a very specific pattern of behavior in Signa, Death, and Blythe in the first book, and in this one, she had backed up every one of their actions with understandable reasoning that made it easier to deeply understand the characters and their motivations. I really do feel like the characters, while maybe not the deepest and most complex characters I’ve ever read, are consistently written, and I appreciate that greatly.
Fate being Death’s brother, Signa and Blythe’s close cousinly bond, the depths of Death and Signa’s romance, the weird tension between Fate and Blythe, the toxic (mostly one sided) attraction between Signa and Fate - they’re all well described and believable. At no point in the book did a character do something and, in response, did I wrinkle my nose and say “well, that doesn’t seem believable.” Grace had set up a very specific pattern of behavior in Signa, Death, and Blythe in the first book, and in this one, she had backed up every one of their actions with understandable reasoning that made it easier to deeply understand the characters and their motivations. I really do feel like the characters, while maybe not the deepest and most complex characters I’ve ever read, are consistently written, and I appreciate that greatly.
And now, we move onto the things I’m less than neutral on:
The lack of a real investigation into the murder.
Unlike in Belladonna, the murder plot really takes a backseat here. It primarily acts as a motivator for Blythe specifically, causing her to look into Fate’s appearance, and later, the whole Thing going on around and with Signa, but because of that, it feels pretty inconsequential. The fact that Signa and Blythe realize they can only turn things around and save Elijah from being wrongly killed for a murder he didn’t commit with Fate’s help seems like a rather lazy cop-out. I can’t decide if I would rather have a badly done twist like in the last book or if I prefer this underbaked investigation, but I do know I would like neither. Personally, I feel like the murder plotline was unneeded - Blythe very well could have just been investigating Percy’s disappearance and landed on the same steps she did in Foxglove. Even the moment we find out the actual culprit of the crime seems boring. I was able to guess who had something to do with it by the midpoint of the book, once again due to Grace’s lack of subtlety. Oh, this character without a real court match who was happily devoted to Percy in the first book keeps getting hella sick from cramps and migraines and is almost dying because of a bunch of herbs she’s digesting? I have no idea why that could be. Or what her motive might be to end up with the only other Hawthorne man available. The mystery plots are not her strong point.
Unlike in Belladonna, the murder plot really takes a backseat here. It primarily acts as a motivator for Blythe specifically, causing her to look into Fate’s appearance, and later, the whole Thing going on around and with Signa, but because of that, it feels pretty inconsequential. The fact that Signa and Blythe realize they can only turn things around and save Elijah from being wrongly killed for a murder he didn’t commit with Fate’s help seems like a rather lazy cop-out. I can’t decide if I would rather have a badly done twist like in the last book or if I prefer this underbaked investigation, but I do know I would like neither. Personally, I feel like the murder plotline was unneeded - Blythe very well could have just been investigating Percy’s disappearance and landed on the same steps she did in Foxglove. Even the moment we find out the actual culprit of the crime seems boring. I was able to guess who had something to do with it by the midpoint of the book, once again due to Grace’s lack of subtlety.
The downside to the investigation’s lack of presence in the book means that there’s not a lot to distract from the more relationship-focused parts of the book. Thankfully, the relationships are interesting enough and well written enough that it wasn’t hard to enjoy regardless, but there were definitely moments where I thought to myself, “hey, wait, aren’t we forgetting that Elijah is scheduled to die?” I think if the book had used Percy’s disappearance as the plot device that moves the story, it would have been more cohesive. Sure, there is a sort of loss in stakes in that we know as readers that Percy won’t be found, that it doesn’t matter when things happen because of that, but I feel like it really could have emphasized the relational stakes between Signa and Blythe, and it wouldn’t feel so much like it was being ignored and shoved to the side when the book decided to focus on it’s characters.
Signa and Death’s relationship really gets sidelined here.
For plot reasons, they can’t see each other much in Foxglove. It’s a perfectly understandable and acceptable reason, but aside from a handful of conversations, specifically those regarding Life and Death’s relationship with Fate, or his fear of losing Signa to Fate, there just is not much between them of note. A lot of the interactions they do have just swiftly become a light smut scene and I truly am not a fan of that - not because I clutch my pearls at smut or anything, but because it washes down a very deep emotional connection that was well done in Belladonna. There were times in this book that I just wanted to see them talk, properly showcasing a lot of the understanding they shared in the first book. That was what made reading their romance come together so satisfying in the first place, and I feel like in this book if the conversation isn’t “don’t trust Fate,” it doesn’t even happen and instead I’m stuck reading a bland section of smut that’s supposed to substitute a proper conversation between characters. I get that it’s a representation of where they’re at in their relationship, but I don’t think it’s needed in a situation where the characters are very much afraid of losing each other. I want more of the intimate conversations that were so excellently done in the first book.
Death himself gets very little to do here.
I get it. Fate is his brother, and if Death meddles too much, he knows Fate will only get worse and more spiteful, plus the whole plot thing that makes it so Death just cannot show up often. But he doesn’t do a damn thing in this book that’s worth remembering aside from, like, one pretty funny scene in a carriage. You’re telling me the man can’t have influenced Blythe in her dreams, couldn’t have helped with the investigation of the murder? He couldn’t have helped Signa clear the ghosts in Foxglove before the shitshow at the party? It doesn’t even feel like he’s riding in the backseat, it feels more like he’s hanging off the edge of the truck bed, floating uselessly in the wind, trying desperately to get to the plot inside the car. Someone please let the man (?) do something.
All in all, Foxglove was another very fun read, and I recommend it. While it doesn’t do some things as well as Belladonna, the additions of Fate and Blythe really buttered up the rest of it, enough where I consider it an equivalent enough fun read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Body horror, Miscarriage, Abortion, and Murder
hecubatohim's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Death, Sexual content, Blood, Vomit, Abortion, and Murder
Minor: Child death, Drug use, and Pregnancy
takarakei's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This series is so good!! If you like fantasy romance and mystery it's perfect. I did feel like the beginning of this was a bit slower and took a while to really grab me. The mystery in this one compared to Belladonna was also not as much of a focus and so therefore it wasn't quite as well done.
That being said Death and Signa are everything. Blythe is also so amazing, I'm so glad we got her POV. I wanted to like Fate more, but he annoyed me for most of this book. I'm willing to give him another chance tho...
I am already dying for book 3, cause I think that one is going to make me feral.
3/5 🌶️ (not graphic)
That being said Death and Signa are everything. Blythe is also so amazing, I'm so glad we got her POV. I wanted to like Fate more, but he annoyed me for most of this book. I'm willing to give him another chance tho...
I am already dying for book 3, cause I think that one is going to make me feral.
3/5 🌶️ (not graphic)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Sexual content, and Blood
Minor: Animal death, Body horror, and Vomit