The Blood Spell audiobook

I didn't really click with The Shadow Queen, the first of hers I read. I think that had more to do with me not being in the right mood for a YA fantasy fairy tale retelling than anything to do with the book (well, except for the fact that my favorite character was killed off. Not that I'm at all bitter about that...) But when I saw this author was releasing a Cinderella retelling, I knew I would have to pick this series back up. And I'm so glad I did! The romance in this one is adorable! And very unique! I loved the clash of personalities, the slow build as the two of them realized they had really been friends all along even though they had semi-hated each other growing up, the snark and banter between them. So well done! And, since this was a slow build romance, it didn't have the usual, annoying descriptions of the guy's hotness, the girl's beauty, and passionate kissing. This romance still had plenty of sizzle, but the characters were very clearly falling in love with each other because of who they were on the inside and it was very refreshing. Like The Shadow Queen, this book doesn't pull punches when it comes to character deaths or gruesomeness. If you're sensitive to blood sucking wraiths and a bit of descriptions of blood, then this might not be the book for you. I'm not sensitive about such things so it didn't bother me at all. In the end, this book hooked me into this series in a way The Shadow Queen didn't (once again, probably not that book's fault), and I can't wait to go back and read books 2 and 3 of this series! So glad this series can be read in any order so me jumping around the series randomly isn't an issue!

I am such a fan of the Ravenspire series.  This may be my favorite one so far, but I'm still trying to decide.   I liked everything about it.  I'm a sucker for a fairytale retelling. You don't need to read each book in order for the Ravenspire series, but it is best if you do.  There are appearances and mentions of characters from other books.  We do see Hansel and Gretel for a brief moment in this one.  There are multiple things from Cinderella, but for the most part, the story is very different.  When Blue's father dies, a woman she doesn't really know comes forward with papers showing that she is to be Blue's guardian if both her parents die.  She brings her two daughters with her.  So it's not really her step-mom, but close enough.  Dinah is not nice to Blue at all.  She is abusive and is using Blue.  Dinah's husband had recently died and he had left her in massive debt.  Not only with the creditor take everything she has, he is also going to choose one of her daughters, too.  While Dinah is a horrible person, it did seem like she loved her daughters in a way.Kellan is the prince and he must choose a girl to marry.  He can only choose someone that will benefit the kingdom.  Each family brings their daughters to spend time with him.  Kellan and Blue grew up together, but he didn't like her much.  He thought she was an uptight rule follower and he was always reckless.  Blue is a lower class and he never thought that would matter much.  But Kellan and Blue start spending more time together after her father is killed.  He starts to confide in her and realizes that she is the only girl he could love.  But Kellan knows the kingdom must come first.Magic has been outlawed.  There was a witch that started drinking the blood of children for power and became a blood wraith.  Blue's mom was involved in helping capture the blood wraith.  Blue has fae blood, so she has magic that has to be kept hidden.  She is an alchemist and spends her days making potions and creams to sell.  Her grand-mere has a wand, but it's only used inside.  Grand-mere's magic is transformative magic, so I'm betting you can guess what part of Cinderella she plays.  Magic starts being used to kill people and children are going missing.  Blue and Kellan work together to try to figure out what is happening and need to see if they can save the kingdom from the witch.I don't want to give anything away, so that's pretty much all I can share.  I absolutely loved Blue.  Kellan was great and I also adored his sister, Nessa.  This was a great addition to the Ravenspire stories and I cannot wait for the next one.Warnings for abuse. I gave this book 5 stars.  Thank you to HarperTeen and Edelweiss for my copy for review.

The Blood Spell is the fourth book in the Ravenspire series by C.J. Redwine and while I love all of these books, this one might be my favorite. It has everything I look for in a book, an interesting plot, great characters, and some swoony bits that make me sigh. One thing to note is that all of these books have different main characters so if you haven’t read the others (WHAT???) you can still read this one without missing a beat.Blue de la Cour is the main character. She’s smart and strong and she loves her family – I loved her relationship with her father and grandmother so much. She’s also willing to do whatever she can to help the homeless children in her city and when I say whatever she can, that includes putting herself at risk by using the magic she has had to keep hidden away by trying to create gold. When a tragedy happens that puts Blue in the custody of the powerful Lady Chauveau, Blue’s situation becomes even more dangerous.Kellan Renard is the crown prince of Balavata and after finishing school, has come back to take his place on the throne. The catch is that he also has to announce his betrothal to one of the daughters who make up the kingdom’s head families and he is definitely not excited about it. As he dives right into his responsibilities, we get to learn right alongside Kellan what is really going on with the kingdom and how he responds when things start to turn violent.Blue’s family has always been close to the royal family. Her mother helped to trap the wraith that was endangering the kingdom, Blue tutors the princess (Nessa) in the ways of alchemy, and Kellan basically grew up around the shop. With all of that said, Kellan and Blue have never really gotten along. He was always looking for trouble and she has always been there to stop him. When he returns, their relationship is still the same, but it slowly changes, and I loved how Redwine moved their relationship from being adversaries to two people in love. It took time and was a slow burn, but it was completely worth it. The fact that they both recognize that they can’t be with each other regardless of their feelings made me want them to figure it out even more. As Blue finds herself under the control of Lady Chauveau, she begins to uncover what she is up to and has to figure out a way out of the situation she is in. Unfortunately for her, Lady Chauveau really does fit the mold of the evil stepmother in this story. As Blue continues to face off with her, she becomes more and more violent…which doesn’t go unnoticed by Nessa and Kellan. I admit I loved it when Kellan told Lady Chauveau off and challenged her when he found out what happened.I loved the fact that this was tied to the Cinderella fairytale although it wasn’t so close to the story that you know what will happen next. The world that Redwine has built out around the story is interesting. There is a belief in the fae and magic is seen as a dangerous thing because of what happened long ago with the wraith. There is still a great fear of magic and while Blue’s magic isn’t dangerous, it is something she definitely has to hide. I also appreciated how Redwine brought some diversity and social issues into this book by including a non-speaking character who uses sign language and having one of the main characters (Blue) have a lens on helping the homeless. It was a subtle add and well done.As the story nears the end, there is a bit of a twist and I didn’t see it coming. Redwine did a fantastic job of bringing the whole story to an end and I loved everything about this story. If you are looking for a fantasy retelling that will grab your attention from page one and hold it all the way to the end, definitely check The Blood Spell out and if you haven’t read the others in this series yet, you should do that when you finish this one. I’ll definitely be checking out whatever Redwine writes next – I’ve loved all of her books to date and she’s become an auto-buy author for me because of that.

I don’t have words to explain how much I loved this book—a Cinderella retelling with murderous rogue witches, sign language representation, a reckless prince, and magic and alchemy. I read the first few chapters of this one night and thought about it the whole next day. I can see, hear, smell, and taste the world so clearly. I adore Blue and Kellan’s prickly-to-sweet relationship. I love Grand-mere, and all the fast-paced plot twists near the end, and literally everything about the world. Also the author is a Christian which is super cool.August 2020 reread: Cinderella, but add murderous rogue witches. I think yes 😍

Good fairytale retelling with good diversity. I wish she had some lgbtq+ diversity as well but an overall enjoyable read. Worth reading! 4 stars

Rating: 4.5

| Reader Fox Blog | Do you ever read a book that has a lot of potential and doesn't really fail but doesn't really succeed, either? This is how I feel about The Blood Spell by C. J. Redwing. I'm not sure if this book tried to do too much at one time or if it was simply not executed as well as it could have been. And yet, I did genuinely enjoy reading it.The Blood Spell is a Cinderella retelling with quite the twist, telling the story of a young girl called Blue who works as an apothecary while simultaneously hiding her magic from the world. Magic, in fact, is illegal after the actions of an evil witch. When street children begin disappearing, Blue investigates the situation with the help of the crown Prince, Kellan, whom she has "hated" her entire life. When her father dies, however, she is thrown into turmoil when her guardianship shifts to a rather cruel woman who is determined to use Blue's alchemic abilities to force her to make gold in order to resolve her recent financial ruin.There's a lot to the plot of this book that makes it exceedingly unique. Were it not for the well developed and interesting plot, I don't imagine I would have enjoyed this book as much as I did. In fact, it is the mystery and the truth of the villains that made this book so worth reading. Readers find themselves immersed in the events of the story, questioning and making predictions about what happened in the past and what is currently happening with the wraith whose been locked away to prevent it from wreaking havoc upon the kingdom as it once did. The characters, unfortunately, are just okay.Despite the fact that I utterly abhorred her name, I liked Blue the best. She was the only character who had a POV that actually felt reasonably well written. Prince Kellan was difficult to read, his portrayal feeling vaguely unrealistic at times. Unfortunate Blue's guardian, Dinah, was a believable villain but I felt that the way she was written took a lot away from the cruelty that she was supposed to embody.This is one of those instances in which the author gives far too much insight into the villain. I'm not sure if Redwing was trying to build sympathy for the stepmother or if she was merely trying to build the reader's hatred. Either way, I feel that the story would have been much better had Dinah's point of view been left out of it. There was no mystery to Dinah, no question about what she was doing, and while the ultimate plot twist was unique and exciting, it was somewhat predictable as a result of reading her portion of the story.I think, ultimately, while I did really enjoy this novel, the writing was subpar. The ideas themselves were fantastic, leaving me with a story that I found true joy in reading. The characters showed great development through the course of the novel, which I loved and appreciated. But the in the moment writing of the story made the characters feel very unreal in their actions and words, the romance feels quite cheesy, and Redwing had moments of laying ideas and comments on so thickly that they quickly got annoying.And then there was the characters of Hansel and Grettle who were majorly random and didn't add anything even though they misled the reader into feeling as though they would soon be exceptionally important. It’s a small spoiler, I guess, because they played absolutely no part in the story at all. Even now I have no clue what the point of their inclusion was. It wasn’t painfully long, but it felt like such a waste of a chapter.So, in the end, I'm left unsure how to feel about The Blood Spell. I certainly enjoyed it a lot and it's not a bad book by any means. But various pieces of the writing really annoyed and frustrated me. Kellan never really felt like a real person not because he didn’t have a well thought out personality but because the author didn’t seem to know how to write it, the book was too predictable at times, and there were far too many moments when I found myself rolling my eyes at the writing. Also, I’m still a little annoyed that I didn’t get to know the little girl who worked for Blue because it made everything surrounding her less emotional than it should have been.This is a hard book for me since I feel so conflicted. For anyone who reads it, you’ll have to figure it out for yourself.I was provided a free copy of this book via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.| Instagram | Twitter | Reader Fox Blog | Bloglovin’ | Facebook |

NEW FAVOURITE BOOK ALERTTHIS IS EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING AND WITH A GOOD DOSE OF LOTS OF CURLY HAIRSO MUCH SEROTONIN I THINK ILL BURST OPEN

The Blood Spell is the fourth book in C.J. Redwine’s series of fairytale retellings. As she has with each of the three previous instalments, The Blood Spell is a wonderful fantasy novel in its own right with threads of the familiar fairytale cleverly woven through the plot to create a unique and thrilling tale. Blue (love her name) de la Cour is an alchemist, working alongside her father to make potions and tonics to heal the people of Falaise de la Mer. But Blue longs to do more, especially for the young street children, so each night she works on her experiment to turn lead into gold. But Blue must be careful not to get caught revealing her secret magic powers, simple and unthreatening though they might be, for fear of death. But when Blue’s father is murdered and a powerful and cruel woman takes guardianship of Blue, she is surprised to find support from her childhood nemesis, the Crown Prince Kellan. Together, Kellan and Blue work to find a way to free Blue, all the while dealing with Kellan’s looming betrothal season, and the threat of the return of the Blood Wraith.This is a retelling of Cinderella so I’m not sure why the events came as a surprise to me. But, because the story was so different from the original tale to begin with, as the story fell into alignment with what we know of the fairytale, the twists walloped me over the head. I’ve always hated the evil stepmother and stepsister and in this retelling the character who plays the stand-in role for the evil stepmother is particularly loathsome. This, perhaps, is made more obvious due to Blue and her wonderful heart. But Blue, while kindness personified, is no soft pushover naively singing in her garden. Okay, that’s funny. I just wrote that and then remembered that Blue actually does spend some time singing while working in her garden, but the point is that she is strong, super intelligent, fiercely brave and willing to stand up to anything she believes is wrong or dangerous. I found her far more likeable than the usual Cinderella, far more likely to take action and stand up for what she believes in. This means looking after street children, agreeing to help her mean new guardian and constantly annoying Prince Kellan by trying to protect him.The relationship, the romance between Kellan and Blue is superb. They have a shared history, a childhood of family friendship, years of attempted pranks and dares on Kellan’s behalf that Blue consistently put a stop to, and a progression of tolerance and continued annoyance into their teenage years. But when that shared history collides again when Blue loses her father, she finds that Kellan is the only one to understand and provide the support she needs. Neither expect their tenuous friendship to develop into deeper feelings, Blue knows she has no chance with Kellan even if he wasn’t a prince and as the crown prince, Kellan must soon choose a bride from one of the ruling families. The adventure in this story is thrilling and the tension high as the characters work together to fight the threats they face. Combined with sumptuous romance, a deeply moving story of loss and grief, evil characters to root against, friendship and great sacrifice, The Blood Spell is a unique and enjoyable fairytale retelling and a perfect addition to this series, each of which can be read as standalone titles. I do hope the Ravenspire series continues and I look forward to reading the next instalment of this magical series.The publishers provided an advanced readers copy of this book for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.Find more reviews, reading age guides, content advisory, and recommendations on my blog Madison's Library