Blood Roses (the Noctivagas Chronicle) Review

I received Blood Roses by Jason T. Graves for an honest review.

The writing style is very polished and presented great. Very few grammatical errors throughout the entire book. Through the beginning I get a very Dan Brown feel from The Da Vinci Code. But why would an old, wise man entrust teenage girls with an important Vatican book (which later doesn't even matter) in the first place?

Graves also reminds me of Creighton with all of the scientific facts he spills out onto the pages in the beginning to give you background. I find this overwhelming in the beginning and really disengaged me from the book.

I couldn't connect with the characters at all. They felt very fake to me and the dialogue between the family just seemed odd at times. One of my biggest quirks is that I have no idea who the intended audience is. The author writes smart and uses big vocabulary, so if it's intended for YA then I think it would go over their heads. If it's intended for more adults then I would see the adult audience growing impatient and annoyed with the twins. The girls are presented as teenagers, but obviously that's a big age range. They act severely juvenile at times, but other times are smart and sophisticated. I don't understand why the narrator will refer suddenly to one of the sisters as "the girl" instead of simply saying her name in many places.

Another side note, the boys at their school act very elementary. I realize boys are immature in high school, but not to this extreme.

A few parts gets really hazy. The writing seems rushed and not fully developed. Other places are overdeveloped and drawn out.

***** spoilers below ****

Mars is very irrational. She acts stupidly annoying and does things that just don't make any sense. Forcing Marcus to kiss and then bite her got a serious eye roll from me. She likes Marcus and then she forgets all about him, then she falls in love with Adrian because....well there is no reason.

And then, the epilogue. It comes out of nowhere and it's almost all exposition. It just seemed like a very rushed ordeal and like the author just said, "hey I'm almost done! Let's end this."

I'll rate this book on Amazon as a 3, but overall I was rather annoyed with the book and not very interested in it. I'd rather see Graves write to a more adult audience with adult characters due to his rich vocabulary and his great polished writing. Polished writing is definitely needed in YA books, but that requires characters to be more fully developed.