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Bound By Blood

Book Review of Bound By Blood (Cauld Ane #1), by Tracey Jane Jackson

Bound By BloodTracey Jane Jackson‘s book, Bound By Blood, marks the second Bound By Blood book in my week long Bound By Blood reading challenge. (Phew, that sentence is a bit of a challenge too.) As a reminder, Bound By Blood Week is dedicated to reading five books in a row titled, you guessed it, Bound by Blood. I picked this up as perma-freebie at Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Dr. Samantha Moore is one of the youngest and most acclaimed researchers in the world. Her specialty is blood and she has been recruited by the largest pharmaceutical company in Scotland. For what purpose she cannot begin to imagine, but in an attempt to break out of her painfully shy shell, she throws caution to the wind and leaves her family and best friend behind in Savannah. Dr. Kade Gunnach is taking a chance hiring an outsider, but he’s desperate to find out how to help his sister. He believes the key lies in her blood, but so far, no one has found the answers. When the new researcher walks into his office, he’s unprepared for his reaction to her and the life-changing ramifications her arrival brings. They’re drawn together by a force neither is prepared for, but Kade is holding something back. Something that could scare her away. When Samantha learns his secret, will she run? Will Kade be able to live with the answers he’s been desperately searching for?

Review:
This was a sweet, low angst New Adult(ish) romance. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of sweet New Adult(ish) romances. But, oh well. The writing and editing is fine and for those readers whose primary interests are ‘awww’ moments and endless (and I mean endless) declarations of love, this is for you.

It’s sweet, yeah, but that’s about all it has going for it. Unfortunately, I found it booorrringggg. Other than two people becoming completely self-obsessed, nothing really ever happens. Even the romance is of the insta-love, I recognise you as my destined mate variety and both parties accepted it without question. There are a few almost unrelated side events I think meant to add a little action, but they’re so secondary to the “I love you. “No, I love you more.” “I’ve missed you.” “An hour is too long to be away from you.” Bla, bla, bla that they feel tacked on, at best.

What’s more, it felt like a lot of the book is dedicated to setting up the future books. Already I know without looking what couple will be in book two and three. It made this book feel scattered and unfocused. Plus, I found myself increasingly annoyed to see two women, but especially the MC, as described as dysfunctional shy and scared and then shown to be quite bold and outspoken. The characters as presented didn’t match the characters as described at all.

So, my final say is that it’s a fine book for the sort who like this sort of book, but not for me.

On an unrelated side not, just because this kind of thing annoys me, who is that supposed be on the cover? Because Kade is Icelandic, with blond hair and blue eyes. So who is to be kissing the person we can only presume is supposed to be Samantha? Hmmm? If you’re gonna put characters on the front of the book they need to match! It’s just my opinion, but I feel strongly about it.

Book Review of Bound by Blood, by Cynthia Eden

Bound By BloodHere at the Sadie Forsythe blog, it is Bound by Blood week. I set myself the challenge of reading all five books on my TBR list titled Bound by Blood and I started with this one, by Cynthia Eden.

Description from Goodreads:
Vampires and werewolves have been blood enemies for centuries, but now a new threat is rising…demons are escaping from hell and those demons are intent on wiping out both the vamps and the werewolves.

In order to stop the demons, pureblood vampire princess Morgan LaBeaux agrees to the treaty offered by werewolf alpha Jace Vaughn. She’ll mate with him, share her blood with him…and in return, the wolves will aid the vampires in this battle.

But Morgan doesn’t realize just how dangerous the wolves can truly be. Jace has been waiting years to claim her. He’s set a trap for his princess, and now that he has her, Jace doesn’t plan to let her go. He’ll send the demons back to hell, and he’ll keep his vampiress—forever.

Review:
Soooo, this is a novella. I’m not a big fan of novella length stories and this is a perfect example of why. It has an interesting plot, a growly alpha wolf who manages to be extra alphay and sexy without being a jerkface, a strong, self-possessed heroine who knows what she wants and goes for it, Machiavellian machinations, some interesting double dealings, a good side character, etc. But at 89 pages none of it, NONE OF IT, is developed. There is no character development, no world building, no time for relationships to progress, nothing. So despite some pretty good writing skills this remains a complete let down.

I, of course, don’t mean this review to be, ‘I don’t liked novellas. This is a novella, thus I don’t like it.’ It is what it is and what it is is a good story that is unfortunately rushed and unsupported because the author tried to cram it into 89 pages. Such a shame too, it could have been really good with another 150 pages.

It’s “Bound by Blood” week

challenge

I admittedly have a rather large library. Between my bought books, freebie books, gifted books, review request books and won books (both physical and e-book, but mostly e-book) I have almost 3,500 books on my TBR.

Now, like most people, some of those are reference books, some are classics I swore to myself I’d read someday, some are gifts or requests that I’m not really interested in reading but can’t bring myself to toss, some are sequels in series I’m not interested in finishing, etc. My point is that I have almost 3,500 books listed as To Be Read, but we all know I won’t and never intended to read all ~3,500.

But when your library start to reach those sorts of numbers you expect to  find titles repeating. And here we get to the crux of this challenge. I happened to notice recently that I have five books titled Bound By Blood on my ebook shelf and I joked that it would be fun to read them all at once. Then, I stopped and decided that wasn’t so much a joke, as something I could actually do. They all happen to be either stand alone books or first in a series. So, why not?

For the next week or so, that’s what I’m doing. I’m challenging myself to read all five of them back to back.* They are (in alphabetical order):

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It’s tempting to expand on this idea. I have another whole series titled Bonded by Blood, at least two books called Blood Bound, and M.F. Soriano’s Blood Brothers (Bound by Blood, #1). But I’m sticking to my guns here and maintaining the exact phrasing of Bound by Blood. Pending none end up on the Did Not Finish pile, each will have a review-post in the coming week and if there is anything of interest in the similarities/differenced (for example, I think they are all vampire books) I’ll write a concluding post. Look forward to it.

*I’m not OCD, but I have a few OCD-like moments. That there are 5, not 6 books on this list and therefore the last row is incomplete, leaving the whole thing looking staggered was almost enough to force me to buy another book by this title just to fill the spot. I resisted, but just barely.