What would you do in order to see justice done?

For twins Clement and Cristina Trudeau, justice has failed their family. Thirty years after their grandmother was implicated in a "magical massacre" and she and their grandfather died in the fallout, their family feels like it's under siege: their father died unexpectedly a year previously, their mother Marie is sick and dying, and their aunts have been estranged from them for a while. Cristina has given up practicing her magic after a spell she used to demand justice for her ex-best friend's betrayal seemed to kill Cris's father instead, and Clem desperately keeps trying to work spells to make their mother well again.

When Clem's good luck gris for his mother leads to the discovery of a hex doll under her bed, they are able to bring Marie back to health, but the questions remain: who placed the hex doll there? Who is targeting their family? And who is attempting to prevent them from finding out what really happened 30 years ago?

This YA fantasy novel set in modern, magical New Orleans is a stunning debut for author Benton-Walker. The chapters mostly alternate between Clem and Cris's perspectives, with occasional chapters featuring Cris's ex-bestie Valentina Savant, daughter of the ambitious Savant family now ruling the Generational Magic Council. The author throws a lot of different plot points at the reader at the beginning, but the twins' pursuit of answers quickly starts weaving the threads together, and the pace picks up rapidly around the halfway point of the book. The magic system is an intriguing one, based on but not copying the practices and spells from voodoo and conjure. (As the author notes at the end, one must respect these practices and not reveal them as mere entertainment for those not in the tradition.)

The characters truly shine: the twins have their bond, of course, but they are far from cookie-cutter replicas of each other. Cris is trapped in her guilt over her spellcasting, stubborn in her relationship with white boyfriend Oz (who has Clem's disapproval), and utterly determined to track down answers. Clem, as a sweet and slightly nerdy queer boy, is still finding his way with gen magic, praying daily to Papa Eshu and feeling unheard, and he struggles with the pain of having lost so many people he loves and thus feeling unworthy of loving and being loved in return. Marie and her sisters (the Dupart Five) each have distinctive personalities, clashing at times but ultimately strong and committed to family. Even Valentina and her grandmother Lenora, both power-hungry and ruthless, have additional depths to their characters, and Valentina at least resists being purely villainous.

Underlying the plot is a brilliant examination of intergenerational trauma and how it impacts different members of a family in different ways. Clem and Cris's family are not the only ones to experience this kind of trauma, but they are the ones who find ways to heal it. The book also shows how hatred and prejudice can be transmitted down family lines in the same way, not just in the white community (as exemplified by the history of the Redeemers) but in all families. And the angry thirst for justice shown by some of the book's characters feels all too real and necessary given the context of our own times.

An absolutely solid debut novel, and I wish there might eventually be another book in this fictional world.

CW: car accident, death (including of a parent), mind control, nonconsensual relationship, racism, gun violence, bullying, homophobia, trauma

Thank you, Tor Teen and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Thanks you NetGalley and TorTeen for this eARC, these opinions are my own. This book is fantastic! Clem and Cris, twins who have had a distance creep up in their relationship, are worried about their mother and when they find out someone hexed her they set out on a quest to find out who did it. They’ll have to trust each other which won’t be easy with secrets that are being kept. They’ll also have to trust their aunts which also won’t be easy because secrets run deep. Not to mention that 30 years ago their grandparents were murdered by a lynch mob because their grandmother had been accused of murdering the Mayor’s daughter. But was history rewritten? Can they overcome all the secrets? Are they safe when their enemies can use magic as well? I enjoyed how both Clem and Cris were dealing with their own traumas, traumas that were realistic and relatable even though they included magic. I loved that their story was rooted in their families history and that it all came full circle. The generational magic and ancestral bonds that come with it was very interesting to read about! The secrets were one of my favorite parts of the book, each answer seemed like it provided new secrets but I loved how Terry J Benton-Walker interwove those secrets and they all connected to play into the larger plot! The secrets keep going and lead into a perfect set up for the next book! I can’t wait to read where the story takes Clem and Cris next! I’m sad that I have to wait so long for the next book considering this one won’t be out for months but I’m looking forward to reading it again in April! I highly recommend this book if you like magic, mystery, familial/ancestral bonds, with LGBTQA+ characters mixed in!

Thanks Tor and NetGalley for the ARC! I really enjoyed Blood Debts. The world building and characters are really compelling. Interested to see what happens next!
4.5 stars rounded up

Blood Debts is a magically wonderful fantasy book with such lovable characters, you'll have no choice but to finish in one sitting. An amazing fantasy debut from Terry J. Benton-Walker!

Following twins Clement and Cristina in New Orleans, the two are trying to pick up their own pieces after their father died. Clem has lost his way in life, and Cris has given up using gen magic. Though, they must come together again when a hex doll was found placed in their mother's room. It all connects back to their grandmother's death and dethroning as queen years and years ago, and their family's seemingly ever-present misfortune. Clem and Cris have to bring together their fractured family, heal their own traumas, help each other, and discover layers upon layers of mystery in order to fully bring justice to their ancestors. I would summarize more of the plot points, but they all blend into each other so effortlessly I wouldn't be able to talk about more without spoiling!

This book is such a wonderful blend of genres. Its the perfect book for fantasy lovers who want to get into mystery and vice versa. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! The reader can tell that Benton-Walker wrote this about their own experience as a black person-- a black queer lead and a black female lead matriarch? This book has it all. It did not shy away from difficult topics like police brutality, systemic racism, and reverse racism not being real, it was wonderful black representation. The characters were so complex, even though there were so many of them. No one faded into the background unless they were supposed to. Seeing how the same trauma impacted so many people differently in one family was SO interesting. Lastly, I am usually so confused when reading fantasy books, but the world building of this book was wonderful and easy to follow. Everything from the characters to the magic dynamics was thought out and executed well.

Thank you to NetGalley for this book!

I really enjoyed this book and discovering this authors works. The story was full of adventure and twists and turns that I found very engaging. I absolutely loved this story and the journey the characters went through. I will be recommending this book to everyone I know.

Thank you to Tor, NetGalley, and Terry J. Benton-Walker for the e-galley copy of this book.

Blood Debts is a fun spin on many of the old tropes (reclaiming one's rightful place, weighing the costs of magic, etc) and both the magic system and character arcs are interesting and satisfying. The writing is a bit clunky at times, and the pacing could be improved, but the shifting perspectives may also be a fun change in approach for readers that more accurately reflects how two people telling a story might differ in their syntax.

Terry J. Benton-Walker's contemporary fantasy debut, Blood Debts, is "a conjuring of magnificence" (Nic Stone) with powerful magical families, intergenerational curses, and deadly drama in New Orleans.

Thanks to Tor Teen and Netgalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I actually had no plans to pick Blood Debts up, and I didn't even know it was a book until I saw it while I was surfing what fun new titles Netgalley had to offer me, and boy am I glad I read it!

I had a great time with Cris and Clem and their quest to take back their family's rightful place in the New Orleans magical community after a lynch mob killed their grandparents 30 years prior to the events of the novel. The character arcs were compelling and I especially enjoyed Cristina's, with her refusal to use magic due to it killing her father. The story itself started off a little slow for my tastes, and I wish the atmosphere and setting had been described a bit more, but the queer representation from Clem and a some of the other side characters was awesome, and I loved the bits of romance scattered in between the search for the truth of what happened to the twins' grandparents. The magic was fun to read about, with the inspiration of voodoo magic taking a part in how it was portrayed, and I found the curses and spells very interesting in what they allowed characters to do, and how magic as a system is tied to heritage and ancestry as an important detail.

This was a solidly enjoyable teen read, and one that I will for sure be recommending to any fans of YA fantasy!

Thank you so much to Tor Teen for sending me an advanced copy of this fantastic read in exchange for an honest review.

i love stories that start off with the reader finding out something horrible has happened and then we get to know characters who have to deal with the aftermath. i loved the magic system in this and the conversations it brought up about white privelege and racism. i loved cris and Clem and found myself wishing I had a similar relationship like they do with my brother.

However the only I wasn’t really a fan of and this is more of just a personal preference, the different writing styles in perspectives from the twins/Valentina kind of drove me insane because the constant changing from the first to third person narratives.


overall I’m predicting this will be a popular book when it’s released and I can’t wait to see the cover. A story as magical as this deserves a beautiful cover.