It is very unusual for me to not finish a book, or not to enjoy it at all. But unusual doesn’t mean it’s impossible, so it was just a matter of time before it happened. Last month I read “Blood Crescent”, the first book in the Divine series from Stevie Marie McCoy (link).
Before I begin talking about it, I want to specify that I finished reading the book. Curiosity is one of my biggest strengths and one of my biggest weaknesses at the same time, and I wanted to know how it was going to end. Also, there are so many examples of endings completely changing my perception about a story, and I didn’t want to take the chance and miss out. Time spent reading is never wasted time in my opinion, because every read (good or bad) ends up teaching me something.
Another thing I’d like to clarify since the beginning is that if the book was a really crappy, there would have been very little curiosity could do to make me finish it. The fact that I didn’t like the book is because I probably wasn’t the best audience for it. There have been a few cases when my nerdiness made me find something to relate to, but unfortunately, this wasn’t one of these.
The main reason why I found it so hard to read was the fact that it was written as if the protagonist was telling one of her dreams, as if the line between what happened in the real world and what happened in her dreams was fuzzy, to say the least. And I’m sure it was something the author wanted to do (and did pretty well) because it is coherent with the theme of the book and the fact that it seems to be set at the border between the real world and another one, much more dangerous than the real one.
The protagonist herself seems quite a passive one, especially in the beginning. Things just happen to her, she’s got a kind of protector who seems to always know what’s coming (even though she doesn’t know it or reveal it much in advance). Her attitude towards the protagonist is annoying to say the least, also because she clearly keeps some information from her, and sometimes it’s the kind of information the protagonist is dying to know.
Anyway, the protagonist’s agency seems to improve a bit towards the end of the book, and since it’s supposed to be a series I’m quite confident it’s a trick from the author to show us the evolution of the main character throughout the series (the protagonist is just sixteen, after all). The ending leaves the reader with a lot of questions about the past and even more about the future, and I’m sure there’s room for a load of revelations in the upcoming chapters
To sum it all up, this book wasn’t my jam. But if you’re into the “young chosen ones with supernatural love interests”, well, I think you should give it a read. And, of course, tell me what you thought about it in the comments.
[…] know it’s a very rare event for me to be so negative about a piece of media, and that I tried my best to find something good even when there was very little to find, but this time I don’t even want to try. It stings too much on a personal level. I am a woman […]