Tag Archives: Kelly St. Clare

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Book Review: Vampire Tower #1-3, by Kelly St. Clare

I picked up a free Amazon copy of Kelly St. Clare‘s Blood Trial about this time last year. (Actually, a year ago tomorrow. LOL) Then I purchased Vampire Debt and Death Game in order to finish the series. I read them all back to back. So, I think I’ll just write a single review for the series, instead of for each individual book. But here is the blurb for book one, to give you an idea of what the series is about.

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The dice are rolled at midnight.

As the twenty-one-year-old heiress to the Le Spyre fortune, my life should consist of strawberry mojitos and golf carts.

Right? But I’m determined to forge my own path. Desperate to escape the meaningless games of the rich, I flee my family’s estate.

Secret alias—check.
Place to sleep—uh, kind of?
Job—crap!

I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but that’s the least of my worries. My city is a giant board game. The players are supernatural— freakin’ vampires—including an overbearing crown prince whose unwanted attention could spell my demise.

Now, I must play their deadly game, or my grandmother and best friend will pay the ultimate price.

my review

As I said, I purchased and read all three books (well, the first was a freebie). So, I can’t claim I didn’t enjoy the series. Otherwise I wouldn’t have continued. But this is one of those series that I enjoyed on the surface. I liked the characters. There’s some humor. The writing is engaging. The female main character had a backbone of steel and a sharp wit. The male romantic lead was forced to grovel in a satisfying manner and I liked how he let his heroine lead in so many situations. I was invested their outcome. I enjoyed it…so long as I didn’t think too deeply about it.

Because there just isn’t any getting around the fact that the hero owned slaves, saw nothing wrong with owning slaves, and had not changed his opinion about owning slaves by the end of the book. It’s gets awful hard to keep the ‘romantic’ in the ‘romantic male lead’ in such cases.

Similarly, there just isn’t any was to ignore the fact that (as is so often the case in romance books), by the end, he had gotten everything he wanted without sacrificing anything for it. While she had to go through hell and willing give up almost everything she valued in order to earn her man. Why are women so often expected to suffer for love, while men just have to exist?

And lastly, there’s just something a little classist and elitist about the way she was made out to be so exceptional because she grew up wealthy and was therefore trained to be more. Sure, she avoided her wealthy friends’ snobbish fate because she had and valued a poor friend. But the whole thing was just icky.

All in all, as I said in the beginning, this is a fun (if slow) series, so long as you don’t think past the surface plot.

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Other Reviews:

Mini Reviews | Vampire Towers Series by. Kelly St. Clare

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Book Review: Love & Curse Making, by Kelly St. Clare

Yesterday, I was scrolling Instagram and randomly ended up watching a video of Emma Hamm (whose books I very much enjoy) opening a Kelly St. Clare book box for Love & Curse Making. About an hour later, I glanced over and saw I that had that same book on my side table. It had come in my most recent Supernatural Book Crate. And I figured, “Well, I guess the universe is telling me what I should read next. ”

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What do jazz pixies, siren celebrities, and three hundred disastrous dates with supernatural men have in common?

Me.

I’m Cerys. And at twenty-two years old, running a paranormal dating agency with my bestie and living in the magical society of Nepos is an amazing life.

Not gonna lie though, it’d be better with a little action. Kissing, maybe? A one-armed hug? Heck, after three years, I’ll take a man touching my bedsheets. Or would if this curse didn’t 100 percent block me from romance.

When my ‘extinct’ brand of magic explodes in the presence of true love, the off-the-charts sexy but infuriatingly bored Detective Devereaux gets involved. And let me tell you, ladies, there are m-u-s-c-l-e-s under his long coat!

So I’m cursed and dodging the law and trying to put more love in the world each day. And now some creep is digging up heart elemental bodies.

Seriously. How is it only Monday?

my review
This was my first Kelly St. Clare book and I enjoyed it a lot. It walked the line between appreciably silly and roll your eyes ridiculous, and occasionally it did trip across the border. But mostly I giggled a lot. I liked the characters, world, and writing.

I wish we were able to get to know Dev better. He pretty much stayed a ‘tall, dark, and brooding’ cardboard cutout. Some depth and color would have helped a lot in that department. And the book is a cliffie. Very little of anything really feels complete by the end. So, I can’t call it a 100% win. But I look forward to getting to read book two in the future. So, I’d call this more win than not.

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