A review by k_cao_xai
Blood Bound by Idella Breen

medium-paced

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

3.0

So much potential.

Character Impressions: 

Snow Bennett
I mean this with the most compassion, but I can’t point out any distinct features about Snow’s personality. I searched and reread passages to try and understand if there were specific traits about her. Is she reserved? Headstrong? Shy? Sarcastic? I can’t pinpoint anything significant.

I guess ‘naïve’ would be the closest thing I can figure out about her personality, but I would like to have seen more sides of her. Since she has no idea about the society Cait is from, being curious would have played nicely into one of her characteristics, but people often gave her information without her asking.

As the main character, it feels like a setback because she wasn’t moving the story forward. I think the story would have benefited if it wasn’t set in a high school since most of the story doesn’t involve the school anyway. Snow could have been an eighteen-year-old who graduated and is getting into college, or getting a job, and it still would have worked.

Cait Fallon
Cait has more going for her. She’s got a tragic backstory, struggles with her alpha, and has some pretty tense conflict with other characters. Yet, as someone who’s been alive and alone for over a few hundred years, I expected her to be resistant about her sudden pull towards Snow.

I do like that she struggles against her alpha but if she had resisted the urge to throw herself on Snow, without Snow’s consent the moment they were alone, this struggle would have been more endearing to see her overcome. 

Minor Characters: 

There are a handful of minor characters in the story—from the school principal to Snow’s parents to different clans/species—but there’s a lot of missed potential to distinguish them from one another, especially when some of them hold powerful positions. 

The most prominent minor character is Gwen, who at times sounds like an older woman who has years of wisdom but at other times, sounds like a teenager when she speaks. She does sort of fit the role of a mentor for Snow, but she doesn’t offer anything other than telling Snow how wolf clans function.

Story Impressions: 

There’s a couple things I like about the story, such as the idea of a wolf song or how when wolves howl, they’re singing the song of a historical event or about a person. And I like the different species, some of which I’ve never seen in other books before. 

There were quite a few things I was confused about. 

• Shouldn’t vampire teens who have been alive for hundreds of years go to a different school with other vampire teens, since they’re not learning at the same level as mortal teens? Or maybe they don’t even go to school and you can see teenage-looking vampires hold high positions because they’ve been around longer than humans. 
• Why did Snow make the fight with her parents seem more serious than it was, because when she returned home to get their help, they were completely fine, even joking as if the fight didn’t matter at all? 
• What are the rules surrounding Snow’s ice powers? Will it be explored in the next books?
• I do wish the story was told either strictly from Snow’s point-of-view, or from Snow and Cait’s alternating perspectives, because for the most part, it was told from side characters, head hopping between different ones, sometimes within the same sentence, making things hard to understand. Most of them had the same manner of speech as well, so I couldn’t tell who was saying what without names in the dialogue tag. 
• That first kiss scene felt awkward with the amount of strangers watching. Not to mention the neck cramp from face sucking at that angle. 
• That first official mating or sex scene was...unexpected in various ways.
  Cait shifting in the middle of sex to mark Snow and Gwen having to be in the other room while they do the devil's tango was certainly something I've never seen in this genre before.

Knowing what the genre was, I had no issue with semi-possessiveness, fated mates, or alpha/omega and alpha/beta dynamics. I expect those in this kind of story. But the biggest issue was the non-consensual attempted sex. No matter how hot someone is, no means no. 

Despite my criticisms, I do believe the author has a lot of potential. There’s interesting worldbuilding scattered throughout, some of the lore is different from what I’ve read in similar genres, and there are moments you can tell the author put a lot of heart into writing it. 

So that being said, I’ll be keeping an eye on Idella Breen for future books because I think she has a lot of potential to write great things. I have high hopes for the author and for the stories she wants to write in the future. 

Highlights: 

• Highlight 1: Cait Fallon.
• Highlight 2: The way the main villain was handled towards the end. 

My Personal Tags About the Book: 

• Lesbian protagonists
• Happily ever after
• Fated mates