Review for "Blood for Blood" by Ryan Graudin

"You and I are not monsters. If anything, we're miracles."


 

Rating: ★★★★☆

This series packs a serious emotional punch. I really enjoyed my time reading, and I was really invested in the characters. I loved the moral dilemmas the characters faced (especially Felix, like wowwww), and I think the 3rd person POV was used really well to tell the story as all the characters. The first book was really just about Yael, and while she's still the main character in the second book, the author really broadened the story by incorporating more characters.

The story didn't really go in the direction I thought it would. It was shocking at times, but not in a way I'm sure I liked. The first book was more of a quest plotline while this book was more of a political war plotline, and I just think some of the twists were unrealistic/corny. That's my personal opinion, obviously I still really like this series as I give it 4/5 stars.

Overall on the duology, I can't decide which book I liked more (and they both got 4 stars from me, so I guess that makes sense). The first book was stronger in plot, but the second book was stronger in characters. Normally strong characters would win out, but I only say the characters were stronger because there were MORE of them. Yael was still an amazing character in the first book, and seeing her struggles with her past and making hard choices in the first book was really great. I really loved the writing style in this book, with the --ALL CAPS EFFECTS-- and the strikethroughs on people's names when they were dead. It really showed how the deaths weighed on Yael's conscience. She could've (should've) been so completely jaded from her past in the camp, and used that as unrelenting fuel to kill anyone who stood in the way of her mission. Instead, the death she witnessed gave her a kind of PTSD that made her terrified of death, including when she was the one doing the killing. I think that Yael was a complex protagonist, and I enjoyed reading her POV a lot.

I also really liked Luka's development. It's mentioned several times in the book how he went from the National Socialists' poster boy to national rebel. In the first book, we don't get his POV, so we don't know any of his history. Knowing his past was really cool, and it made sense with how he makes his decisions. I'm torn over whether or not I liked the Luka-Yael romance or if it was unnecessary, like the author was just putting it in there because he felt that a YA should have a love story. I really thought it was sweet how Luka's inner monologue was admitting that he was staying and joining the resistance for Yael, but I think their admissions of loving each other in the end of the book were a bit rash and corny. To be fair, they were in the middle of an extremely dangerous mission where they could very likely die so I mean YOLO, but still it felt weird to read. I liked [ Luka's honorable death, like I like that he died for a cause he only just joined because he knew he was making up for time spent being the face of a horrible government (hide spoiler)] but I wasn't a huge fan of how that all went down exactly. I just felt like he deserved something bigger and more dramatic.

Now Felix was interesting. We definitely got more of him (compared to Luka) in the first book because with Yael impersonating Adele it went into their family history a bit. But Felix's moral dilemma in this story was so, so well executed. His motives are almost the exact same as Yael's, but in an opposite context. Yael knows that killing the bad guys in order to prevent more death in the future is worth it, but she still has trouble doing it. Felix knows (thinks) that betraying the resistance will save his family's lives, but he still has so many doubts and regrets about it. His panic is portrayed really well, and I think it makes it hard to hate him, even if he did ruin things and was wrong. I don't love Adele, but Felix, FELIX, was an awesome character.

One last thing about the series as a whole - I can't decide if I loved or hated the skin shifter plotline! And that was like the main part of the story. It was just a bit too science fiction (in a book that felt more historical fiction) for me to completely jump on board. The science to me just does not make sense, and it made things a bit too convenient throughout the story (except of course, Yael ruined that by have 5 large conspicuous wolf tattoos on her arm, but I suppose she had a pretty telling inmate tattoo to begin with). The skin shifting was interesting, but then when SPOILER Miriam came in and was ALSO a skin shifter... it just felt kind of silly. It was fun, but it brought down the novel's level of legitimacy.