Book Review: Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin

Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin

Author: Shelby Mahurin

Published by: HarperTeen on September 1st, 2020

Rating: ★★

Genre: Young Adult // Fantasy

NOTE: This review is a rant review and contains tons of spoilers.

SYNOPSIS

After narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Dames Blanches, Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are on the run from coven, kingdom, and church—fugitives with nowhere to hide.

To elude the scores of witches and throngs of chasseurs at their heels, Lou and Reid need allies. Strong ones. But protection comes at a price, and the group is forced to embark on separate quests to build their forces. As Lou and Reid try to close the widening rift between them, the dastardly Morgane baits them in a lethal game of cat and mouse that threatens to destroy something worth more than any coven.

The hotly anticipated sequel to the New York Times and IndieBound bestseller Serpent & Dove—packed with even steamier romance and darker magic—is perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas

Okay, this book was one of the biggest letdowns ever this year. It is even in my most disappointing books in 2020. I was so looking forward to it after loving Serpent & Dove during the summer, but this was honestly horrible.

Do yourself a favor and either reread Serpent & Dove before picking this up OR try to find a spoiler-filled review to recap the events in book one for you. Blood & Honey picks up pretty much right where book one left off and gives you little to no refreshers. I was so confused and I had to ask my friends to remind me what happened in book 1 and read reap. Not a promising start already *sigh* needless to say Google was my best friend while reading this.

From the beginning, the first chapter already pissed me off. Hear me out:

Lou, Reid, and Coco have just made it out of Chateau alive. Just barely. Enemies are close and they are being hunted from all angles. What they need are allies. So what do you do? be careful so you don't get caught and killed OR sneak away and sleep together? Yep, you guessed it, that's exactly what Lou ad Reid did... so frustrating. She starts off as just unbearably stupid and making rash decisions that get everyone into trouble. Her inability to control her hormones leads her to try to sleep with Reid when they are sleeping amongst their companions. WHY? NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS.

CHARACTERS

REID AND LOU

We all know Reid is one extra soft boy. But in this one? I don’t even have the words to describe how weird it was to hear him moping around for the entirety of this book. Throughout the book, he can't accept he's a witch and refuses to use his powers. I lost count of how many times he was almost killed because of that. He swears too much for someone who hates swearing and is overly possessive towards Lou which got annoying very quickly. Lou was just meh and still annoying af. She can do no wrong and everyone just makes excuses for her, she’s gone from being rather annoying to downright psychotic in this book.

BEAU

I still don't see the point in him. He doesn't have an arc and is just... there. he serves no purpose to the story and is just there for "comedic relief" which gets extremely annoying after awhile.

ANSEL & COCO

For the life of me, I don't understand why the author is pushing them so hard to be involved romanticly. I did not care whatsoever about these two. Is it for added drama? it really wasn't a necessary subplot. I got more platonic vibes from them so what happened just made me.... uncomfortable.

THE PACING

This baby comes in at over 500+ pages….and nothing worthwhile happens until about the last forty or so pages. 100 pages: nothing happened, 200 pages: still nothing changes, 300 pages: nope! Nada! To put it bluntly, this book is just filler and it absolutely should have stayed a duology.

PLOT TWIST & ENDING

I read some reviews where people said they started crying at the end and it was so unexpected. So I knew someone was going to die. And I was right. Even the cliffhanger couldn’t save it. This ends on a cliffhanger. Is it a big one? Yes. Do I care? Not one bit. It’s kind of sad when that huge “haha gotcha” moment of reading a cliffhanger is met with a sigh of relief because at least the book is finally over.

When Ansel started to follow Lou in the tunnels to Morgane, I knew that he was a goner. His death was way too predictable and of course, the one character I kinda like had to die. In the most abrupt way too may I add. Like a knife to that pure boy's head. Ouch. And right after Lou roasted him too.

Have you had the chance to read Blood & Honey?

Let me know in the comments!

happy reading!