Review: From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Alexis:

Okay, so this book is hot garbage. But it’s enjoyable hot garbage. 

Think a refashioned Twilight; throw in some werewolves and two types of vampire type things. Although, this book honestly has way more plot and worldbuilding than Twilight ever did. 

The first half was a little slow as it set up the world, Poppy’s character, and Poppy’s role in the world. The writing is honestly not great, though it did improve as the story went on (and as I managed to turn off my critical reading brain). But there were just some strange sentence structures and a lot of “telling” over “showing” in the first half, especially.

Plus, there were typos. I don’t know if it was just in the e-book version, but on page 305, for example we have: “Of course, you do.” Why is there a comma after of course?? Later on, we have: “He was an Atlantian, His people…” There were others, too, but I tried not to keep track of them all. After all, that’s not the author’s fault.

There were a lot of plot twists that were obvious from nearly the very beginning of this story, and Armentrout throws in very heavy-handed foreshadowing that doesn’t help. The romance is very Twilight-y in that there’s a power imbalance, and Hawke’s character is morally grey (and at times creepy, hello Edward).

Okay, then why did I say this was an enjoyable read? Because the dialogue is dynamic and snappy. There’s a lot of well-written tension. And once you get past the not-so-subtle foreshadowing, I found the world and the world’s history interesting. Plus, reading about flawed, morally grey characters always intrigues me, and it kept the pages turning. Despite Poppy having some pretty dumb moments, I enjoyed her POV and found her an interesting character, and I was glad that her character knew how to fight. 

My enjoyment while reading this book? Nearly 5 stars! But the writing comes in at about a 2. I’m not sure I want to rate this one overall, but I guess that would fall in at about a 3.5. You can bet I still want to read the series, though! Too bad I have to wait about 7 weeks to read the next book from my library.

Anyway, if you can turn off your critical reader brain and you’re looking for a Twilight meets A Court of Thorns and Roses kind of read, then you might like this.