House of Earth and Blood is the first book in a New Adult Fantasy series, Crescent City, by Sarah J Maas.
Bryce Quinlan, half human/half fae, worked hard and she partied even harder. That is until a demon murders her best friends, leaving her alone and in a very dark place. When the murders start up again Bryce rises from her despair in order to help with the investigation and avenge the death of her friends.
Hunt Athalar is a famous fallen angel, forced into slavery with his renown powers reduced by spells and bindings. When he gets the chance to reduce his sentence by helping Bryce locate a serial killer, he jumps at the chance. But working with Bryce may be more than he bargained for.
Together Bryce and Hunt dig deeper into the dark heart of Crescent City and what they find may just lead to more than a murder. But knowledge often comes at a cost, will they be willing to pay the fee?
Ahh what to say about this. Maas’ books always have that guilty, sexy, pleasure read aspect about them and this series is pretty much the same. I am glad that it is labelled as an Adult series because I always thought there was a lot of explicit sex in her ToG series to really fit that YA genre. And boy does this one have a lot of sex, explicit language and substance abuse. So yea, good for the Adult label.
I liked the twists this story takes the second half of the book. The first half felt somewhat familiar and predictable. Sure the characters were fun–Maas sure likes her sass and snark–and I think there is going to be a TON of room to develop our side characters, who really made the story for me. But I’m really on the fence on whether I really, really liked it or not.
This is definitely a guilty pleasure read and the audio book probably gives it a few extra points in my opinion. It gets between a 3.5-4 stars from me.
That’s all for now!
-M-