I found this book difficult to read.
The style was choppy and somewhat disconnected.
Additionally, the times of the storyline and characterisations of the actors was less than succinct nor were they clearly indicated or described.
All of which led to an unsatisfactory reading experience.
I failed to finish. Other readers may have more patience than me.

This book had many tropes that I personally don’t find that interesting including a love triangle and a brooding love interest. I did appreciate the mystery element but overall it could do with a editor to trim down the exposition and punch up the plot movements. There were a ton of run on sentences and an over-reliance on commas. Overall, I found the structure confusing and the grammar contributed to it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3994089959

Mystery, magic, strong characters and plot.

I love how history is pulled in to support the plot - witch trials, barbaric punishment - of flourishing secret societies that kept a few safe.

Mysteries to be unravelled as the characters grow into mystical abilities.

I look forward to the next installment.

This review of Blessedly Bound by Lucretia Stanhope is courtesy of Netgalley.
Review: 2/5 #BlessedlyBound #NetGalley

Note I'm reviewing the 2020 revised edition.

It's a sad fact, but I do judge a book a bit by it's cover. It definitely looked self published but that's not a deterrent. Blessedly Bound had a title and description that still pulled me to add it to my NetGalley queue as I love magical stories as well as mysteries and this sounded like a good combination.

The advance praise of "“From the very first sentence you know that Blessedly Bound is going to be like nothing you have ever read.” Amazon customer" sounded promising. I can say, that is a dud or the reviewer was being sarcastic. "GWEN GLARED AT her raven, Lewis." It's not the most exciting. Actually, I take that back, it's the first where I've seen such interesting mixed usage of capital letters in a book's first sentence. The first three words of the sentence all in capital letters, that's certainly not like anything else I've read. Thinking a bit more a raven is an unusual pet too.

Also not promising, by the 9th paragraph in the book, I've already spotted a grammar issue. "Gwen let of of the screen door. Its spring slammed it shut." Yeah, that should have been "It's" with an apostrophe. Luckily the grammar and spelling in the book are generally good. There's something though about the phrasing that makes it a bit torturous for me to read. If I hadn't committed myself to doing the Netgalley review, I wouldn't have finished reading it and would have stopped by the second chapter.

As for world building, while we know there are witches, voodoo, familiars and vampires, we don’t know anything else about the world. Are there rules for magic? Is magic kept hidden or is it out in the open? Do the non magical types know? The hints that we do know come from back and forth conversations between the characters, so we’re “told” rather than “shown” what the world is.

Most of the key characters (other than Dillion) aren't very likeable and seem to yo-yo between various emotions and feelings about each other. There's lots of secret keeping amongst the characters even ones that supposedly care/love others and there's definite darkness to the story. Sometimes in the conversations it feels like bits are missing because the main character Gwen makes random conclusions.

Young witch Gwen is determined to find the person responsible for the death of her grandmother. Many people in the town where her grandmother lived and she has a feeling it is someone who is still there.. This is a first in a series of books called An Elemental Witch Trials. I did not love or dislike this book, I enjoyed the concept of this creation. However, l found it lacking in character development and it felt a little repetitive at times. A part of me wants to continue on to see what happens with Gwen, her magic and love interest but I just felt the story lacked that good punch of what sometimes makes you want to continue. Overall, it seems like a good YA fast read if you need a distraction book because again I do like the concept.
#netgalley

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital copy in exchange for an honest review

I've been trying to read this book for 7 hours, and have only managed to get to 20%. Those aren't good stats compared to basically every other book I've ever read.

I'm just not invested. The story is slow. In the 20% that I've read, nothing has really happened except for the MC being in love with her familiar when he's in human form and longing for him while he's in raven form, and then drooling over Sebastian because she finds his human form attractive. I don't know what his other form is. I didn't get that far into the book. We kind of just got plopped into this world with little to no explanation, and I don't expect to have all the answers, but at 20% at least a couple things should have started making sense, but alas, I've been bored and confused the whole time, and I don't want to force myself to struggle with it any more.