The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals #2) by Tessa Gratton

The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First I have to say thanks to Netgalley and Random House Children's Books for letting me read the e-galley of this. Thinking back to the book, I had to go back and upgrade my rating from 3 to 4 stars. I have to say for some reason I liked this one a lot better than the first one. Not sure why. I did like the first one, but this one had me more on the edge of my seat and wanting to pick it back up when I had to put it down. While it is the "sequel" to Blood Magic, it doesn't really include the main characters from that book, Silla and Nick. They do factor in, and are part of the background story. And actually Silla's brother Reese who turned into crows in the last book, is a big part of the book. He has become Mab Prowd's familiar. He stays with her instead of staying with Silla, and helps her with her magic. The book starts off with Nick dropping off a young boy named Lukas who has a black candle rune carved into his back by his father, who we find out has cursed him and pulls on his magic. We also start with Mab trying to find out why the roses around the house were so hard to get rid of, yet her grandmother really wanted them gone. To find out more about them, Mab's spell creates a humunculus so that she can hopefully get it to talk about what is going on. This creature is able to escape from the protective circle and takes off running. It runs into Nick, and attacks him, so Nick has to destroy it with the help of his dogs. But it turns out Nick is now connected to Mab and will need Mab to help him figure out what is going on. Nick's life is not great to start with. One of his older brothers died about a year ago, and his family has been changed ever since. Again the diary entries/letters are mixed into the story. At first you don't quite understand what they really have to do with the story, other than they talk about Arthur, who was the Deacon of magic before he was ready to go join his wife and pass on the title of Deacon to Mab. We do learn about Mab's mother also. Soon as the story goes on, I began to try to figure out on my own the roses and the relationships between all these people in the past. It all gets a lot worse, right after it seems things are getting better, and has a lot of suspense at the end.
I really liked the characters in this one. There was still a lot of blood, but it seemed less for shock, and more as a part of the story. There were sometimes at the beginning that it drug a little bit, but mostly the story kept me really involved and as I said, wanting to pick it back up when I had to put it down. Definitely a good, and pretty original story in my opinion.

Tessa Gratton, Breanna Yovanoff, and Maggie Stiefvater

It also was exciting to get to talk to Tessa Gratton, the author of this book, at BEA.

Make sure you're checking back a lot this month, as my Blogoversary comes up, I plan to spend the whole month with special posts, and there will be a really big giveaway starting on August 9th, the actual blogoversary day, and going the rest of the month, along with some smaller giveaways throughout.

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Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this book our main character is Silla, her life just hasn't been normal since her parents died. And when I say died, the police say that her father killed her mother, then killed himself. So Silla has had to deal with that, as well as the fact that she is the one who came home and found them, got their blood all over herself, and in her hair, and she sat there, until her brother came home and called the police. She now lives with her older brother Reese and her step-grandmother. Of course as happens in many teen books, a new boy has moved to town, and he lives in the house across the cemetary from Silla. Silla receives a book in the mail from someone named the Deacon. It is her father's spellbook. And now Silla thinks that maybe her father didn't kill her mother, that maybe something else happened. Silla goes to the cemetary and tries out some magic, and it works. But the new boy, Nick, sees her. Nick has magic in his past as well. His mother is in an institution for what has driven her mad. Nick has come to live in his grandfather's house which was left to him when his grandfather passed away. His father and stepmother, who he calls Lillith, live with him. His step-mother, (Lillith is not her real name) is an author and really thinks living in the small town by a cemetary will help her write. When bad things start happening, and Silla reads about what might have happened to her parents, Nick suspects Lillith. But just who it is, well, that will be a bit of a surprise. And then, Nick and Silla must defeat this person if they want to live.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. I liked the story. I enjoy when authors insert diary entries, or else even just flashbacks to the past. And I think when they leave it so you don't know for sure exactly who this person from the past might be in the present time story it adds a bit of mystery that I like to try to figure out as I read. Now, I understand that the title is blood magic, and that means that blood is needed for the magic, but it was a little too much cutting for me at times. And I won't give it away, but when Silla attempts a new idea to get a lot of blood for one spell, well, I really couldn't stand that part. I'd rather hear about a person cutting themself in that case. I am interested to see that it is listed as a part of a series on Goodreads. And as I said, I did like the story, so I'll be looking out for the 2nd book in the series so that I can read on and see where it goes to next. Which is good, because although we find out who the person writing the flashback diary entries is, we never learn exactly who the Deacon is. I have to also say that there were some very emotional, and unexpected events in this book. Another thing I really like is that the author set it in Missouri, my home state, and where my one teen novel I sort of started is set. This is one of the authors that I met when I went to see Maggie Stiefvater, and counts towards my Meeting 12 Authors Quest. And I like that it isn't all that if you are a good guy you scrape by without being a casualty of some sort. That seems more realistic to me, and is more what I think teens read realistically. As a teen I was reading Stephen King so you know I was reading about a lot of casualties. Funny that now that I'm an adult I've gone back to reading what I was kind of ahead of at that age. But these YA books are really good these days!



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