review: Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

May 24, 2011

Random House Books For Young Readers

Young Adult | Paranormal

Blood Magic #1

Pages: 416

Source/Format: Gifted/Hardcover

Rating: ★★★★

It starts off simply.

Draw a circle... place a dead leaf in the center... sprinkle some salt... recite a little Latin... add a drop of blood...

Maybe that last part isn’t exactly simple. Yet somehow it feels right to Silla Kennicott. And nothing in her life has felt remotely right since her parents’ horrific deaths. She’s willing to do anything to uncover the truth about her family—even try a few spells from the mysterious book that arrived on her doorstep ... and spill some blood.

The book isn’t the only recent arrival in Silla’s life. There’s Nick Pardee, the new guy next door who may have seen Silla casting a spell. She’s not sure what he saw and is afraid to find out. But as they spend more time together, Silla realizes this may not be Nick’s first encounter with Blood Magic. Brought together by a combination of fate and chemistry, Silla and Nick can’t deny their attraction. And they can’t ignore the dark presence lurking nearby—waiting to reclaim the book and all its power. 

REVIEW:

Here’s my problem, first off: if I saw someone doing magic in the cemetery, I would probably run away and think that person was crazy. Yet, Nicholas knows about magic and has done it so he thinks what’s Silla’s doing is a-okay. O___o Guys, I would so run. 

But honestly, that isn’t that too bad, you know? So I shrugged it off and continued reading. . . oh. OH. When Nicholas and Silla first kiss, it’s like their worlds shift and all of a sudden they can’t stand not being around each other. Ew.  I don’t know about you, but I like my space. I like having time to MYSELF, so this was too much for me. 

And we weren’t even halfway through. 

Then Nicholas meets Silla’s older brother and Reese and his first remark, though Reese has done nothing to him, is to say: “Normally, I’d have made some comment about his attitude being big enough to hold the headstone up without the help of his ass, but I don’t want to piss him off right away.”  P. 142, hardcover. Um? He hasn’t done anything to you, dear Nicholas, so I don’t see why you would want to say that…?

Okay. That. Um. Okay. So, after some blood magic, Nicholas cuts his finger too deep and it’s still bleeding after they do magic. “I sucked on my finger. It still bled sluggishly. The taste reminded me of kissing Silla.” EW EW EW. Are you saying she tastes like blood when you kiss, because if so: EW EW EW. Gag me with a spoon because this is getting gross.

Then he goes on to call her “babe” and well, I hate the word “babe.” I really do. Very rarely can people pull it off, and it does not work for Nicholas. It just doesn’t. He also says: “I slept like ass, exhausted and sweating, . . .” (p. 168, hardcover) I knew he said this, because of reviews pointing it out. Here’s my take: my friends and I say “this tastes like ass” or “this smells like ass,” etc., but I’m not sure it has the same effect as I slept like ass. It sounds very weird and how can you sleep like ass? IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. I even asked a seventeen-year-old about “slept like ass” and she said that it DOES sound weird and that nobody says it because IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. 

Awkward phrasing at trying to sound like a teenager FTL (for the lose.)

I also hate how protective he is of Silla. Dude. She’s been doing fine before you ever showed up. And you’ve known her what, a week? And you are already threatening her counselor? Dude. No. That is low.

But despite the faults, I really did enjoy this one. The ending totally made the book for me. Guys, that ending . . . it is INTENSE. It was so intense I wanted to pick up the companion novel, The Blood Keeper, and start reading, which is something I never do. I don’t often read series back-to-back, I don’t know why, it just drives me insane. The only one I’ve managed to do that with is Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, and even then it was a fluke—because my computer died in the middle of the reread and I wanted to get to the end. 

But man, there was something—dare I say it?—magical about Blood Magic. While the beginning was a little slow (in fact, it didn’t really pick up for me until around page 150) once the plot uncurled and I could see some of the more obvious twists (erm, yes, I totally saw Josephine’s story uncurl and I so knew), it was all I could do to not read it. There were a few twists I didn’t see, which is always a nice surprise. Because then I gasp and go, HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT??

I also liked the addition of the Shakespeare and plays; it’s not every day the main characters are in a play. But I absolutely despised that Nicholas wrote poetry. Oh dude. How many of you know guys that write poetry? TEENAGE guys for that matter and shows them to some guy he has never met before? It didn’t seem like Nicholas was all that manly, and that seems incredibly sexist of me to say, but it’s the truth. He honestly didn’t when he was writing poetry, and I understood why he did, because of his magic blood. But it was still a little strange for me.

But most of all: this was a book I needed to read. It has its problems, sure, but there’s still a good story underneath it. While I wasn’t sure about the alternating POV (mostly Josephine’s diary entries—they were a little hard to read, yeah? The font, I mean. Maybe I’m just old.) but in the end, it got to me.

This won’t be everyone’s type of book. There’s awkward sentences (lol “I slept like ass”), there’s a lot of blood, there’s animal killing (that pissed me off so much) and even Silla and Nick could annoy readers. But if you like literary and dark, bloody, magical books, Blood Magic is for you.

Other Reviews:
IceyBooks 
The Underground (+ an author interview right here.)