A review by skillyillian
From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

adventurous dark emotional funny 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

3.75

Another notch in the bedpost as far as slutty dark book boyfriends go 😌🙏🏻 mild spoilers ahead 💅🏻

There's really not a whole lot of plot until like. Literally halfway through. It's mostly Poppy fawning over Hawke and fretting about all of her ✨ activities ✨ being discovered. After the first fight she's actuslly involved in, things pick up more. 

Poppy is naive, as someone in her position would be, and someone her age. I'm sure we're all shocked to see another completely unnecessarily barely legal FMC 🙄 but anyway she's also a little bit not super smart all the time? Hawke's true identity was pretty clear once they started getting closer and it had to be literally spelled out for her to get it. Idk. She's still pretty badass tho, seeing her fight against and completely defy the bullshit purity culture she was forced into was really satisfying. Hell yeah, you go girl, get dicked down like you deserve 🙌🏻 and her revenge moment against someone evil was just chef's kiss, 10/10, give her more swords right this instant. 

Hawke is great, the banter and flirting were 10/10 and the way he knew she could and would hold her own and let her do it was so hot.
my big ick with him was when poppy found out all his secrets and she was clearly distraught and having a whole entire menty b and he just kept hitting on her and telling her they'd fuck again and all that stuff. WHILE she was realizing he'd been the direct or indirect cause of all of the deaths of the people close to her. And he was like "yeah they're all dead but you'll let me tap that again later" like ... Dude that's gross. Yikes, the insensitivity 😐 but that was it, ig?
  he definitely fits the angst factory profile and that's what I'm here for, so props for that lmao

Anyway despite this not feeling super plot heavy and somehow still taking a while to get going, it was an entertaining read and I'll definitely continue with the series. The smut was fun. The banter was great, #1 way to keep me reading is with witty, flirty, steamy banter. This was that thing. I'm excited to see poppy come into her own as someone not chained down by evil shitlords and a foul purity culture. 🙏🏻
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