"Enchanting, visceral, and twisty." - New York Times bestselling author of Ash Princess, Laura Sebastian "Bloodleaffeels like a classic in the making." - Sara Holland, New York Times bestselling author of Everless A roar of a dark and luscious epic fantasy that's layered with heady romance, bloodthirsty magic, and ghostly intrigue - an absolutely wicked delight. AGES: 14 plus AUTHOR: Crystal Smith is a writer, photographer, and artist who developed an early love of storytelling in a family of voracious readers. She resides in Utah with her high school sweetheart husband and two lively sons. When she isn't writing or creating, she can be found re-watching Jane Eyre or reading ghost stories with all the lights on Princess Aurelia is a prisoner to her crown and the heir that nobody wants. Surrounded by spirits and banned from using her blood-magic, Aurelia flees her country after a devastating assassination attempt. To escape her fate, Aurelia disguises herself as a commoner in a new land and discovers a happiness her crown has never allowed. As she forges new bonds and perfects her magic, she begins to fall for a man who is forbidden to rule beside her. But the ghosts that haunt Aurelia refuse to abandon her, and she finds herself succumbing to their call as they expose a nefarious plot that only she can defeat. Will she be forced to choose between the weight of the crown and the freedom of her new life?
I went into this book hearing A LOT of hype about it. For me - it was a really good, entertaining read with a cool magic system and some characters (ghosts count as characters...right?) that I truly came to love.
It was a bit annoying that the "bad" characters were...simply straight-up bad. There was nothing redeeming about them at all. One (NO SPOILERS) has a back-story explanation that will make sense, but the other? Notsomuch. Even the worst of us tend to have *something* in us that keeps us from being a cartoon character bad guy...and the BEST bad guys are the ones who are torn, who have moments of verging on goodness. However, obviously - this was nothing that kept me from enjoying (greatly) the story. It is a nitpick flaw, at least for me, considering the strength of many of the other characters.
This is the start of a trilogy, and I have a couple of theories about how the remaining two books would go. One would be a straight-up spoiler, so I'm not going to write it here. I will just say it has something to do with a bloodied piece of fabric. The other has me wondering if books two and three will deal with the other two forms of magic?
Overall, once I really got into the book, I quite enjoyed it. The end moved extremely quickly, but even the beginning wasn't terribly slow. I will quite definitely be reading the second book at whatever point it comes out, and I it will be interesting to see where the story goes from here.
