annieb123
Written on Feb 9, 2022
Blood Bound is the third book in the Youkai Bloodlines series by Courtney Maguire. Released 1st Feb 2022 on the City Owl Press imprint, it's 299 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This was such a melancholy read for me. Themes of loss, grief, self-harm, compulsion, commitment, and emotional honesty are central to the plotline and character development. I found it very sad. It's the third book in the series and there is a lot of background information that isn't recapped in this book, so I strongly recommend readers begin with the first books in the series before reading this installment.
The writing is beautifully rendered, often quite sublime, and the Japanese settings are an integral part of the story and very well done. The central characters are diverse and representative and include non-binary and LGBQT+ central characters. There is a fair bit of graphic sexual and violent (and graphically sexually violent) content and descriptions on-page. There were some sex scenes of a questionable consensual nature which left me feeling a bit squicky, but they *are* vampires/demons/monsters (in the characters' own words).
This was outside my normal genre reads (cozy mystery, SF/Fantasy, children's, and nonfiction selections are 90% of what I read), so fans of horror/romance/supernatural romance will find a lot to like here. The writing is way better than much of what I've read in the genre. NSFW, keep this one on the bedside table.
Four stars (probably higher for fans of the genre).
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.