Blood and Honey by Shelby Mahurin
Dear Books Lovers,
Shelby Mahurin’s Blood and Honey reading group has also come to an end. With Francesca from Francelovebooks, and all of you who have participated, we are having a lot of fun in this shared reading, for this reason we also started the reading group of the final volume of this trilogy, Gods and Monsters.
I would venture to say that I liked this second volume slightly less than the first. If serpent and dove was super smooth, enough to not make me respect the stops of the group but devour it in a couple of days, Blood and Honey forced me to continue reading even after the end of the time given.
When everyone told me that the second was much slower than the first I didn’t want to believe them, also because reading the first 100 pages I came across a fairly smooth and beautiful story, apart from the negative evolution of Lou’s character. After the first 100 pages, however, it started to bore me because nothing interesting seemed to be happening.
The story picks up exactly where it left off at the end of the first volume. Reid and Lou and all the others who were with them, but especially the two protagonists, are wanted, with a bounty on their heads. They will spend most of the book as fugitives.
What I liked was the integration as more important characters for both Beau and Ansel, and then there was also the addition of other characters throughout the book that were important to the storytelling. In some scenes there was the return of old characters such as Jean Luc and Lou’s ex. In itself, the story was there, but in reality, almost nothing interesting happened. The first book had been a cluster of twists and turns after another.
But maybe what slowed the story down for me was Lou, and the character she became. She has become selfish, irritating, reckless. She doesn’t listen to her husband, she doesn’t listen to her best friend, she doesn’t listen to anyone, she does everything her own way and seems more and more like her mother, the woman everyone fears and wants to kill.
What broke my heart was the final death, a very big loss that shouldn’t have happened for me. And then there is Reid who is still the same as the first book, only now he is trying to accept his nature and trying to reason with his wife without success. And then there’s his mother, Madame Labelle, who just tries to put a spoke in the wheel between the two, as if Lou’s behavior wasn’t enough.
We come to the end of the book with some new information, new alliances and new plans as we move towards the end of this trilogy which however, albeit with ups and downs, is a story that I will always recommend. A new adult trilogy, albeit the only new adult thing was that scene in the first book and nothing more, with a very loving trope, that of the fake marriage, or forced marriage, and a plot that in itself is not bad at all.
If you have read the first two books and are missing the third, join the reading group, you still have time, the timing and compliance with the stops is not important, everyone can take all the time necessary for reading, we are waiting for you. You can find the link to the telegram group both in my instagram bio and in the tiktok one, and if you don’t already do it, I invite you to come and visit me on both social networks because I post a lot more content every day.
Link to purchase the paperback
