For Nick Pardee and Silla Kennicot, the cemetery is the center of everything.
Nick is a city boy angry at being forced to move back to the nowhere town of Yaleylah, Missouri where he grew up. He can’t help remembering his mom and the blood magic she practiced – memories he’s tried for five years to escape. Silla, though, doesn’t want to forget; her parents’ apparent murder-suicide left her numb and needing answers. When a book of magic spells in her dad’s handwriting appears on her doorstep, she sees her chance to unravel the mystery of their deaths.
Together they plunge into the world of dark magic, but when a hundred-year-old blood witch comes hunting for the bones of Silla’s parents and the spell book, Nick and Silla will have to let go of everything they believe about who they are, the nature of life and death, and the deadly secrets that hide in blood
Rate: 3.5 out of 5 stars
My thoughts:
Okay, guys. I have a predicament. Let me start from the beginning. Okay, so, when this book first came out, I absolutely went ballistic, wanting to buy it. You guys don't even understand how much I wanted this book. The cover was just so pretty with the girl and the flower. But whenever I went to the store, they never had it! This would happen to me multiple times. So I gave up on it!
Fast forward almost a year.... I go to Barnes and Nobles wanting to buy The Rise of Nine, when an interesting book catches my eyes. It had runes, fire, smoke, and blood and......OMG! IT WAS THE SAME BOOK! Except the cover was changed. So, I literally threw myself at it, and bought that sucker on the spot! In my mind, I was thinking "This book is gonna be great!" So, I read, and read, and read, and.......well, quite frankly.........it wasn't that great!
Let me start with the characters! I wasn’t thrilled with the characters in the story. I liked them but they really didn’t shine for me. They were kinda dull, actually. I found them interesting but not really believable. Nick talks about how he was a jerk but you never really see that side of him. You see some rude behavior on his part but never the extremely jerk-ish kind of guy he claimed to be. Silla always seems depressing to me. Although, I really like how she would describe a mask, for every situation.
Tessa's writing style was nice, but I sometimes found that the book was dragging, and getting slower as it went along. I would actually find myself skipping pages. (don't worry! I would go back to re-read the parts I missed!) Sometimes the interchanging perspectives didn't really have their own voice. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. It wasn't until around the end of the book, when it started picking up...alot! There was action, and suspense, and I was really into it then.
I also really liked Tessa gratton switched up the original which into something a bit different! Most people would think of stuff like "Hocus Pocus" or any other witch movie. But NO! She intertwine blood, love, magic, and romance. I loved the diary passages, and the Shakespeare references throughout the book.
And lastly, I was a bit annoyed with one of the characters death, in the book. (no spoiling who, though) They could've regenerated the body to let his spirit back inside. But they didn't. In the novel, they argue that they didn't do it because it was "against nature." but they had already admitted that they needed to accept their magic, even if it wasn't the normal or natural. I mean, come on! His spirit was still alive!
I'm gonna wrap this all up now. Plain and simple: this book was good but with some small issues. If you want to read this, you really have to dedicate because, once again, it gets a little slow.
Quotes:
She was asleep. In my car.
I stood next to the passenger side for a minute, looking down at her. The sun made her skin seem translucent and bloodless. For a moment, it didn't matter why I was falling in love with her. Just that I was.”
― Tessa Gratton, Blood Magic
“By lunchtime, the glitter was flaking off my mask. Three pearls dropped off and rolled down the tiled hallway.”
― Tessa Gratton, Blood Magic
“I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever.”
― Tessa Gratton, Blood Magic
“And just like that she was crying.
I felt a little like That Guy who holds a baby at arm's length because he's afraid it's going to pee on him.”
― Tessa Gratton, Blood Magic
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