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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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