This review has been in the works for a little too, but that’s because it’s a tough title for me to review. I originally received this as an eARC earlier in the year, and made it to about the 40% mark before DNFing it a few weeks before its release. I had already pre-ordered it and wanted to try it again, so I grabbed my finished copy off the shelf in May and read the rest of it over the span of a few days.

“Courage does not always roar. Valor does not always shine.”

Sometimes, when I set a book aside and come back to it, it’s because I just wasn’t in the right mood—other times, there was never going to be a ‘right mood’ for that particular read, and that’s what happened with this one. I really thought this would be one of my top reads of the year, so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to say that I think it suffered from quite a bit of over-hyping.

“I teach you to be warriors in the garden so you will never be gardeners in the war.”

It felt pretty predictable for the most part, a solid 150-200 pages of it was very boring to me, and most of the characters weren’t enjoyable to read about because they just didn’t feel fleshed out. Zélie was likable, if a bit simplistic, but I think the only character I genuinely enjoyed was Amari; she undergoes a tremendous amount of character growth in a very short span of time, and was honestly the unsung hero of this novel.

“We fought. We persevered. We rose.”

Also, please don’t even get me started on the forced romance in this story. This entire novel would have benefited tremendously from being romance-free, but instead we got this very awkward, uncomfortable pairing that I saw coming from the first page and found myself cringing, waiting for it to happen, until it finally did. When I, as a huge lover of romance in stories, literally end up skim reading entire pages of romantic development, there’s a problem.

“You crushed us to build your monarchy on the backs of our blood and bone. Your mistake wasn’t keeping us alive. It was thinking we’d never fight back.”

Of course, it’s not all bad; I know I sound negative and I don’t mean to, because Children of Blood and Bone has a lot of positivity to bring to the table, too. It’s so incredible to see a fantasy novel by a black author, with a cast entirely comprised of black characters, and to know that so much of it is inspired by the author’s own heritage (though I am dismayed to have seen several own-voice reviews calling the Nigerian representation flawed). I adore the author as a human being and think she is a delight, and I’m ecstatic to know that she’s already gotten such a killer movie deal for this story.

Will I rush to continue the series? Hard to say. Will I be in the movie theatres supporting the hell out of this adaptation, though? Absolutely! Also, despite my lack of being impressed by the writing itself overall, if you enjoy fantasy stories, I still strongly recommend picking this up—especially if you aren’t as cynical of a reader as I tend to be—because this book has an audience and deserves to be given a chance.

Thank you so much to Henry Holt Books for Young Readers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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