“I leaned back, studying her as she finished my bun. A bit of icing covered her lip. Her nose was still red from the cold, her hair wild and windblown. My little heathen.”
I was really concerned about not liking this book because of all its hype. A lot of the over hyped books I’ve read this year have been poop, so I was expecting this one to follow suit—I’m surprised and glad to say it blew my expectations out of the water.
This is in competition for one of my favourite books of 2019! The story gripped me from the first paragraph and I couldn’t and didn’t want to put it down. I fought through sleep to complete the book. I don't think that I can say that I've been captivated by a plot that quickly before... ever! That was just incredible writing.
The concept of witches and witch hunters, religion vs. paganism beliefs was done quite well. The enemies to lovers trope was done PERFECTLY, and it’s my favourite trope so hats off to Shelby for making magic with this one! I mean, a witch marrying a witch-hunter is so taboo! Lou and Reid have that bantering chemistry that just makes you ship the hell out of them as a couple, even though he is hardcore religious and she is a witch.
Lou is such a fun character. She is such a foul mouthed, down to earth, lives for herself character! She always has some sort of come back for everything that is thrown at her and that kind of character development and her attitude totally made me enjoy the book so much.
There were so many well played out plot twists in this book! We discover some major jaw droppers about Lou's parentage. These twists kept me up reading all night I swear. Every time I thought I was going to put the book down, Shelby wrote something else that kept me hooked and up reading.
We learned a fair amount about the coven that Lou is from, Le Blanche, in this book. I am really excited to learn about the different covens in further books. They hint at the end about more from Coco's coven and the blood witches which seem super interesting!
Am I upset that this book didn't win any Goodreads awards this year? YES! Because I strongly believe that it should have. It should have all the dang awards. It was just so dang good.
The sequel, Blood & Honey, is not scheduled to be released until September 1st 2020 *cue sobbing*. But hey, that's my birthday month so I will be asking for that for my birthday gift! Honestly though, I need the sequel like, yesterday.
