Title: Blood Match
Author: K A Linde, narrated by Caitlin Elizabeth
Length: 11 hours, 6 minutes
Genre: Paranormal romance, Fantasy, Dystopia
Is this book part of a series? Yes, this is the second book in the Blood Type series. As I didn’t want to wait, I went with the origional edition.
I discovered this book via… The author’s instagram and website.
Publish Date: (for this version of the audiobook) July 17th, 2018
Summary Courtesy of Goodreads:
As the provocative, sensual Blood Type series continues, the rare bond between Reyna and Beckham is threatened by betrayal, greed, and twisted secrets. A desperate human. A powerful vampire. A world divided. Reyna Carpenter was promised paradise. She was delivered into hell. Giving up her body for money was supposed to be the hardest part of becoming a blood escort. She never expected to lose her heart to her dark, enigmatic boss, Beckham Anderson. After being taken by a depraved captor who plans to rule the world, Reyna will do anything to return to Beckham. She just has to find the will to survive this game. From the pawn, rises a queen.
My thoughts:
Anyone that knows me knows I am obsessed with the Oak & Holly series- like, bought all the merch and trying to create a fandom because for some reason there isn’t one yet- obsessed. When I saw on Linde’s website that there was a series before this one that set the stage for the Monster Wars…. I had to read it. I have to say this was different than I had hoped. The characters don’t hit as hard, often being two dimentional or plainly unlikeable. Maybe I am biased?
It should be noted that I was impatient and did not wait for the new, rebranded and renamed books. (The new edition of this one, The Captive and the First Blood Game, is out on eBook and paperback- the paper copy is beautiful). For my eBook buds, the eBook of the new version is currently available on Kindle Unlimited. As the first book did not have a lot of deviation from the original save the name, some vocabulary and maybe a missing paragraph, I thought it safe to proceed.
Reyna is not growing as a character, as far as I can see. I don’t see any real strength- nothing that is going to make me believe she can handle being part of the rebellion. She’s naive and easily led- even after being betrayed by a so-called friend. Her manor towards how she wants to help is almost petulant. She only wants to do what she wants to do- reguardless of whether she’d be good at it or if the position is open. Granted- girl’s got trauma. Lots and lots of trauma. If she were working on it, I would be behind our girl. But she isn’t. She doesn’t want people working on her blood- because of what happened while she was a captive, I get that. But the needles issue? She was bitten by a vampire in book one- she asked for it- how on earth is she still afraid of a needle. Honestly, I cannot like her character. The side characters I want to like- Meghan, Brian, Drew and Jody- are still too one dimensional for me to get a good hold on her. It’s like Jody is only there to make funny oneliners and bad decisions. Pass.
Beckham is a walking red flag in this book, and no one will ever convince me otherwise. He is still cold, commanding. Daddy knows best. He’s still working with Pen even though he knows it hurts the woman he claims to care about and goes about ignoring Reyna only to show up in her room at night all bent out of shape. No, just… no. There isn’t any actual chemistry there that I can see, it just isn’t believable. Add to that the whole Blood Match/ Soul Mate thing… overdone and executed poorly. Sorry, not sorry. Oh, he’s my soul mate? That must be why I love him so much when he doesn’t support me, talk to me, trust me or spend time with me. Makes perfect sense.
While there was some great world building and the actual story was very interesting, the book just could not be saved for me. This is a two star book for me. That said, I still read the third book (review to follow. I actually finished these books weeks ago but I didn’t know if I wanted to write a review as it was likely to be one long rant).
As far as adult content goes, there is violence, emotional and physical abuse, sexual content (both consentual and attempted non-consentual), language, and torture. It’s a lot to take in, which is why I consider this one a New Adult book instead of Young Adult.
The book is out? Have you read it? Am I being too harsh? Let me know.
Happy Reading,
Gwen
