I didn’t finish this coming of age story, where family and magic is everything, but highly recommend it for teens instead of middle aged women who like reading young adult (like myself). Some YA crosses over for generations but this one didn’t do that for me.
In “Blood like Magic,” sixteen year old witch, Voya, needs to find her self confidence and decision making skills.
I’m all for feminist novels but it’s a bit much for the whole first chapter to be about her first period. Having twin cousins with the same name is an interesting choice. The “hack me” slang in substitution for “fuck me” is funny.
There’s a lot of her family members to keep track of and it felt overwhelming. I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the characters in the beginning. She labels her cousin/best friend as “mean.” Her mom demanded she get out of the tub but I did like scenes with Granny.
The Calling is a cool concept but it’s something happening to her instead of her having agency. I also really like the gift concept and how it varies.
The dialogue feels appropriately young adult to the point of almost too YA that is only meant for teens and not for middle aged women who enjoy young adult books.
I’m sad that Voya sees herself as such a failure. The blurb isn’t consistent because it states, “the one thing Voya didn’t expect was to fail.” But the end of chapter one reads: “I don’t think the ancestors have ever seen someone as apt at failure as I am.”
Sometimes the small talk slows the pace. There felt to be a bunch of filler in the exposition of unnecessary conversations that weren’t needed. The stakes of the blurb feel really high but it was dragging on too long in the beginning. I skimmed some other reviews where the readers believed it picked up around page 100 but I couldn’t last that long
Cassie Swindon 