Review: Cursed Blood

''The world flew by without me and I was okay with it for once in my life. I was okay with not being the centre of attention. I was okay with not knowing what was going on around me.''

★★☆☆☆

 Avery Black wanted normal but then she saw her father murdered. And, like most people, she didn't take it well.  Ending up locked in an institute, she locks her emotions away from the world becoming cold and detached. Little did she know that when she would be released to her uncle's care, her life would change indefinitely. 

When I was offered this book by the author Ashley Marie herself I was ecstatic. The synopsis gave me the impression that this would be a bestseller someday. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly the case.

Starting off with the narration of the story. The book is mostly from Avery's point of view and also told in the first-person narrative. But then all of sudden it jumps into a third-person narrative which is mostly told from Kayden's point of view but there were other characters also mixed in. The thing is, the change between those two styles is not what bothered me, but the way it drastically changed the story. The third-person narrative felt clumsy compared to the first-person narrative.

Avery as a character was amazing. The way she was written just brought her alive. She went through a believable change and developed a lot as a character. The thing that blew me away was the way her emotionlessness was portrayed throughout the story. Just amazing.

Unfortunately, that isn't what I could say about the other characters. Almost all of them went through zero development, ending up as cardboard copies of their original full potential. This wasn't the only thing about characters that was a tad bit weird. Most of the time all the vital characters are introduced and recognised as 'important' in the first half of the book. Maybe not in the immediate beginning but still soon. And you guessed it, in Cursed Blood one very game-changing character was fully introduced very late in the book. Yes, he was mentioned a few times earlier, but nothing gave away that the reader ought to remember him at all.

I don't say everything is wrong with the book. I really loved the idea behind the plot line. The basic elements were there and they were the perfect mix of suspense, romance, and supernatural. The end result just wasn't for me.