Blood Magic (The Blood Journals, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Dec 03, 2010 Brandi ;) rated it it was ok

Shelves: fairies-witches-vampires-and-were, i-dont-wanna-grow-up-ya-read-as-ad, kindle-kindle-love-my-kindle, 2011, paranormal, stupid-stupid-stupid

I can not write my review or even give this book a rating right now. If I do, it will NOT be pretty and I will ramble on and on in anger. So, I will get back to this one later, once time has helped me partially forget some (please God most) of this book. Time....I need time.

Time has passed so here goes ...

Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

I just can't give 1 STAR anymore unless the story is so horrid (think Fallen) I want to hurl objects and hurt others. So 2 STARS it is since no objects were thrown a I can not write my review or even give this book a rating right now. If I do, it will NOT be pretty and I will ramble on and on in anger. So, I will get back to this one later, once time has helped me partially forget some (please God most) of this book. Time....I need time.

Time has passed so here goes ...

Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

I just can't give 1 STAR anymore unless the story is so horrid (think Fallen) I want to hurl objects and hurt others. So 2 STARS it is since no objects were thrown and no bodily harm done to anyone, expcept my brain.

I was feeling quite bold when I picked up this book. I've been having an unbelievably great run with the Paranormal YA books this year (Unearthly, Intrinsical, She Smells the Dead, Clarity, ect.), so I allowed the cover and synopsis to whoo me & draw me in. Afterall, my second best favorite kind of stories are witch books and this one sounded like a good witch-ish book, so I dove right in. I must also mention here, what I didn't want to think about while picking up the book, is regardless of my 'good run' of YA, I have also had a few here and there that quite literally sucked hard. I dismissed this and went for the gold in hopes the book would fall into my 'good run'catagory and add on to my YA winning streak. Unfortunately, I was not to be a winner this time and this book fell into the 'sucked hard' catagory. sigh

Silla goes through a tramatic ordeal, she finds her parents dead in what appears to be a murder/suicide. This leaves her and her brother, Reese, to be raised by a ex-stepgrandmother, Judy. Nicholas moves into town and into his grandfathers old house, which happens to be down the road from Silla's house. Silla finds a book that was her fathers and is full of spells for all kinds of magic. Through this book she discovers she can do magic herself by using her blood. Nick was raised by his mother for the 1st half of his life and she taught him all kinds of blood magic as well, she is afterall from this town, as was Silla's father. So when Nick witnesses Silla in the graveyard cutting herself and performing a spell, he is hooked. Of course there is the inevitable romance between them and it is one of those love at first sight/we were meant to be together things. I can get over this, it wasn't so overly done that I wanted to throw up, it was just annoyingly there. Not too big of a deal. What I couldn't stand was Nick. His smart ass attitude got on my nerves at every turn. I really don't understand what Silla saw in him. I tried and tried to like him, but he continued to piss me off till I just gave up and started wishing him gone. But Silla just kept falling more and more for him, her soulmate.

You know, if kids really did find their soulmates at 16 as much as these writers like to have you think, then there should be a HUGE drop in the divorce rates. I don't mind romance in a book, hell, I love it and I welcome it. But that's it, just romance, not soulmates as teenagers. It just does not happen as often as all these books say it does. It's dilusional and misguiding. Most boys at this age are not waxing poetry and thinking of true love forever. They are helplessly overrun with hormones and have no clue how to control them, yet, if ever. There are usually only 2 things on their minds, some sort of competition (sports, gaming, or what ever) and sex.

But whatever, in this book Silla and Nick are meant to be forever, so what can I do but roll with it. I don't care so much for how the story was told, with one minute it's Silla telling a story and then the next it is Nick and so on and so on, back and forth. I prefer to stick with just one person's point of view, keeps things neater, but again I rolled with it. Why? Well, as much as Nickypoo pissed me off and as much as the jumping stories annoyed me, I still was drawn in by the storyline. The whole scheme of things, so to say. I was intrigued by the magic, by the small snippets thrown in here and there of some other blood magic witch, and most of all for some reason, Silla. I attached to her pretty quickly and I felt for her. She had been through so much and she was dealing with it the best she could, hiding behind her make believe masks. But through it all she still held on to some sort of strength and was determined to prove her father didn't do what everyone said he did. She jumped into the spells and magic and began to feel alive again because of it. I don't know, I just liked her.

As I neared the end, the author decided to throw in a needless death, more for shock value than for any real reason. She did this also closer to the beginning, but it was small and pointless, but small, something to just swallow and move through. The second time was bigger with more 'WTF!?' and 'You've GOT to be kidding me'. Plus, I really, really liked the character that got offed.
I can't say I like it when a fairly major character is killed off, but I am willing to understand an authors motive for said killing if there is a substantial reason that follows for this death. Like it or not, I will work it out and go with it. But when a death is simply thrown in as a 'ha-ha, never know who I'm gonna kill do ya!' or just as a 'gotcha!' then it is just stupid shock value and I do not appreciate it nor do I care to understand it, since there is nothing to understand. This death was pointless, cruel and unneeded. If I hadn't been so far along and so invested already I would have put the damn book down and walked away without regret.

I honestly went into this book with a blank slate. I had no expectations other than wanting to read something good. In my current state, (I am very preggo, therefore I have no memory and I've apparently lost my brain to my uterus) I forgot about a review a friend made and a promise I made to myself to remove this book from my TBR closet. With the factors of SO MANY FRIGGIN' BOOKs in my TBR closet and my lack of gray matter, I picked this up and jumped in, clueless as can be. My memory didn't begin to tickle until certian annoyances started to pop up and I decided to check a couple of reviews, wondering if it was just me. I quickly saw my error, but since the book didn't appear that bad just yet and seemed to be quite interesting, I plunged ahead and stuck with it. It saddens me that this book could have been great. It had so much potential and I really did like it at the beginning, it sucked me in quick. I liked the whole blood magic thing & I did enjoy following along as the back story developed. But there was just too much done for simple shock value and 'just because' without any valid reasoning for me to stay interested. I hated the end. I hated the 'shocks' that were literally thrown in. I will not be reading the next book, I just don't see how anything that follows this could interest me in the least. As always peeps, what does/does not work for me might/might not work for you, so read it yourself and see. This is just how the book made me feel, or didn't make me feel, whichever. Enjoy (if you can) .... ...more

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