I am in love my friends. Not just with hot, hunky Christian, not just with Victoria's beautifully broken story, not even just with the amazing writing in this book, but honestly with the whole package. It has been a long time since a paranormal book has really taken my breath away. So long in fact, that I thought I was done with the concept of vampires, witches and the like. Bloodspell has officially changed my mind, and I'm smitten.

Let me start with the characters. For those of you out there who simply must fall in love with your characters in order to enjoy a book, welcome to your Eden. Victoria and Christian are gorgeously written, and perfectly flawed. See, there is no set line drawn between the "good" and "bad" sides of what the two of them are. Amalie Howard shows the inner battle of emotions that goes on in each of them. The all-consuming need to give in to their baser instincts. They make mistakes. They let the darkness within them take over at times. It's this flawed existence that makes them so amazing and so believable.

What I loved most of all was how Bloodspell takes everything that you know about witches and vampires, and blends it perfectly with brand new content. Lovers of both of these paranormal creatures will appreciate how Howard sticks to what we already know, and just adds in more fantastic back story for you to fall in love with. The blood that burns in Victoria's veins is well, rather vicious! Her powers have the potential to be dark and terrifying, or of course to be used for good. Add in the fact that her and Christian are not even supposed to be friends, much less more, and you have a recipe for a book that will keep you reading no matter what else you are supposed to be doing. Don't start this book if you need to be somewhere, or eat, or really anything else.

The action and fight scenes in this story are descriptive, and I liked how the violence that occurs with these two sets of paranormal creatures wasn't masked over. There is bloodlust. There is violence. Scenes happen where people die and their blood spills upon the Earth. It's not overly gory, but it's there. To me it was an essential part of the story to show that, no matter how composed they look on the outside, Victoria and Christian are constantly fighting that inner demon that is wanting to get out.

A delicious combination of older mythology, new powers, forbidden romance, and so much more, Bloodspell is a book that I cannot wait to read again. Luckily this is the first in a series. I cannot wait to see more from Amalie Howard and her vivid characters. Seriously, this has the highest seal of approval that little old me can give a book. LOVE! Go grab a copy and dive in. Let the darkness consume you. ( )

Victoria was a fabulous character. She wasn't really your typical teenager to begin with and truly, I found her to be a bit boring at the start. Once she realizes that she is a witch, the reader is able to see that, although terrified, she is also incredibly strong and this mental and emotional strength only grows as the story progresses. Her journey from being a nobody to being a witch with unimaginable power was creative and interesting to read. I thought she was a refreshing female lead. Christian was strong as a male lead as well. He was good looking but wasn't made out to be a perfect male specimen as many male vampire leads seem to be these days. He was the stronger of the two as the relationship began but by the end of the book, she was the more powerful one and this was refreshing also because we usually see the male vampire as the dominant when it comes to power and strength.

The main story revolves around her discovery about who she really is and her growth as she learns her new role in the world. Her struggle with the power of the blood that runs through her veins is engrossing and the many action scenes kept me on the edge of my seat. Was there romance between Victoria and Christian? Absolutely! But it was kept more in the background. It was definitely enough to make you swoon a bit but not so much that it took away from the story.

One character I hope to see more of is Angie. She was very unlikable at the beginning but slowly opened up to Victoria and became what was probably her one true friend. Her power to see auras around people was interesting and also has a lot of potential to add more to the continuing story.

There were a few times when I felt that deja vu, reminding me of other popular vampire stories, but this was an engaging, sometimes dark story that kept me turning the pages and leaves me waiting for the second book, Bloodcraft, which comes out in late 2014. If you like witches and vampires and the paranormal in general, this book won't let you down. ( )

I can’t. It’s no use, I just can’t finish this book. The characters, their contrived, useless conflicts, the intriguing world that is hopelessly undeveloped and, above all, the immense cliché abuse just defeat me, Not only can I not finish this book but, since I was tempted to DNF it after a mere 10%, going any further would be unfair to the other DNF books that I finally gave up on.

Now, saying you’re tempted to give up by 10% is pretty extreme – but this book begins with so many of the classic clichés, tropes and general fails that I was cringing.

Firstly, we have a prologue paragraph telling us there’s a law that forbids vampires and witches from consorting.

Right, folks, who can tell me what the plot is about? If you answered “it’s about a vampire and a witch falling in love” have a cookie. I have no idea why we have this new habit of giving away the plot in the opening prelude, especially when you have damn little plot, but it has to end.

Then we have a girl, bullied at school with dead parents (mark off two more points on your checklist). She has super special powers she just doesn’t want because she wants to be normal, wooooe! Yes, it’s another teenager with super powers who just wants to be like everyone else – like every teenager never. Mark another cliché off the checklist. Oh and she has a book that may guide her about her specialness but she just can’t bring herself to read it because it’s just too awful

She goes to a new school and meets a vampire (no he’s not labelled as such but after the opening prelude why even pretend this is supposed to be a secret). And ZOMG he’s hot and awesome and hot and sexy and hot and has an amazing voice and he’s hot – this goes on for a few paragraphs.

Then we switch to his POV - actually, brief interlude for a side rant: the book keeps doing this. There’s no chapter break or anything else, we’re suddenly in Christian’s head rather than Victoria’s – suddenly her thoughts are a mystery and his are an open book. Then we whiplash back again – no rhyme or reason, no necessity, just constantly switching back and forth clumsily to allow more exposition


And yes, it’s all about showing AND telling. If Victoria thinks Christian looks sad, she will describe his sadness, then we’ll go into Christian’s head to describe that yes, he is indeed sad. Interspaced with massive infodumping that is repeatedly shown or can easily be inferred but the author treats the audience like we’re a bunch of concussed kittens who can’t read any subtext at all. Which is probably why the opening paragraph appears just in case we didn’t get the not-so-subtle-clues on the way.

Anyway, I was distracted by the awful writing – back to the first 10%: so we then enter Christian’s head (and yes, he’s a several hundred year old vampire going to school because… no, no reason, just because. After all, of course your 200 year old Parisian vampire aristocrat is going to go to a private school in rural Washingto - errr, Maine!) and he finds her awesome/sexy/hot/pure/wonderful/compelling/amazing/etc etc etc.

At this point I think they passed each other in a corridor. They have had zero meaningful interaction but both think the other is the most amazing thing in the world ever.

But there’s more! Because not only are we going to have that old forbidden love thing coming to bite them on the arse, but it turns out that good/musty vampire Christian who never ever kills to feed because he’s a good vampire, can’t resist her! She smells so good, he can’t be near her or he will drain her dry, nomnomnomnomnom! She just smells SO GOOD TO Edward- sorry, Christian. Can’t imagine why I mixed them up.

Finish off with a pretentious hobby – am I the only one who sees a trend in poorly characterised YA protagonists having a pretentious hobby dropped on them to provide some rough attempt at character building and make them seem extra special and not like their shallow, lesser peers? It’s usually classical literature, classical music or long dead artists. In this case it’s classical music (we get to long dead artists later for a twofer).

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It took me a long time to get through this book, I kept putting it down after starting reading it. I just couldn't get into it from the very start. I honestly wanted to like it but it just didn't work for me.

The Plot. I liked the promise of this book. The whole plot about a cursed witch and fight within yourself concept was really interesting. But everything else... I mean it was like any romance book where a girl meets a boy she can't be with and also the triangle, or more like where her best friend is in love with her. The most interesting part in this book was probably Christian and his relationship with his brother, because I really wanted to see how that going to work out. Everything else was just not interesting.

The Characters. All the characters were just eh. for me. They weren't well developed and seemed plain aside from their powers or who they were(as in witch, vampire, warlock, etc.). Victoria was just annoying at times, just like her friend Charla. Christian...he didn't swoon me at all. In this book I only had interest in Lucian and Angie and they were far from main characters. I only had interest in them because of there mysterious kind of personality, but in the end they both kind of disappoint me.

The Romance. The main part in this book is the romance between Victoria and Christian. Honestly I didn't really feel the connection there(Edward and Bella even did better). For almost all of the book they were thinking about how they can't be together and the reasons why, instead of thinking a way to find to be together and why they should. They kept going back and forth and being all jealous when they weren't even together. That was just annoying.

The Writing. The writing in this book was really confusing at times. The scenes just went back and forth between different people and at times you couldn't figure out who was thinking. Like the first sentence is Victoria and the next is Christian.

Overall, I didn't really like Bloodspell. A lot of times I just wanted to stop reading it. I don't think I will keep reading the series, maybe only to see what will happen to Lucian. ( )

*I received a digital copy of this novel from Netgalley on behalf of Langdon Street Press*

This book is basically Twilight, if Bella was a powerful blood thirsty witch that had a cat she could communicate with telepathically (yea, you read that right)....

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