Reviews with content warning for Blood - The Crown of Gilded Bones

This has been my favorite read of this series so far. Once again there were some parts that dragged out and I had to trudge through to finish, but the things that come to light and discoveries that are made had me sitting on the edge of my seat excited to read and learn more. Poppy is still a freaking badass. Casteel and Kieran are just 😍 I do wonder each book just how much more Poppy is going to have to deal with. Poor girl needs a break 🥺🤣 I am following an alternative reading and am jumping to Flesh and Fire book 1 and am excited to dive back in!

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vermontsnowboarder's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

1.0

As the third book in this series, I expected more. Several issues plagued this book.

1) The first 80% of the book was filler. The only important events happen in the last 20% of the story.

2)

In book 1, there was a kidnapping. In book 2, there was a kidnapping. In book 3, there was a kidnapping at the beginning and a kidnapping at the end. I desperately need Armentrout to pick a new trope. Please. I'm begging.

3) Poppy's useless inner monologues continue, and they're painful to read at times. They go beyond not understanding things until she does to actually being poor writing.

4) Casteel only wants to and cares about getting into Poppy's pants. He is a useless character with little purpose other than getting Poppy off.

5) Kieran and Poppy have a much healthier relationship than Poppy and Casteel.

6) LOTS of repetition - I don't need every detail rehashed in every book.

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selestre's review against another edition

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emotional informative 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

4.75

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hanreadssbooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.5

not a fan of the continuous use of the words “male” and “female” when they could be replaced with other words. terminology and a little predictability urged me to knock off half a star.

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toastyghosty13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.75

i found this book to be soooo frustratingly slow. it started off strong and i really enjoyed the prior 2 books, so i had high hopes. instead, it felt very repetitive of “insert new problem here that arises” and “have to find this artifact/person/location” to get further down the plan, but all of these problems and necessity of key items/persons/locations are seemingly come out of nowhere.

i also was frustrated that the book before this spends soooo long getting to a location, and then finally arrived there at the end, but only because we barely spend any time in the final location during this book and then immediately back track to the location we just came from in the previous book. we spent so long trying to get to atlantia and barely got a good glimpse of it.

i also am getting tired of hearing how strong and courageous and beautiful and brave poppy is. this is one of a multitude of reasons this book could do with some better editing.

i wish i enjoyed this more since i liked the previous books so much. not sure if/when i will get around to the rest of the books in the series and the books in the prequel series.

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jnp3752's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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mari_books's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

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

2.75

This book…I wanted to hold out and wait for it to make sense but…aside from some of the spicy scenes and clever dialogue I really can’t find many things I enjoyed about this book. The world building and lore are so confusing and frankly bizarre, it’s almost like AI generated dark romance. The pacing seemed way off most of the time, with pages of scenery description but rushing past meeting core new characters or action scenes. I also found

all the sex during or after violence/ threatening violence to be whiplash inducing and again pacing was so off

I can’t say I’ll read any more of this series - I’ve kind of seen all I need to see.

Content Warnings

rorireads33's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

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