Format: ebook
Published: October 1st, 2023
Age: Adult
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Goodreads
Rating: 2/5 Stars
I love paranormal romance (or are we calling it romantasy now? The lines are blurred!), I love werewolves, and I love a good fairy tale reimagining, so I was really excited when I picked up A Curse of Blood and Wolves. This book markets itself as a ‘dark and steamy fairy tale re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood’, but what we get is…not that!
I kept forgetting the MC and her sister were meant to be…early twenties, I think? The MC has a bad case of “not like other girls” because she (Ruby, get it, because Little Red…so, Ruby…) is a goth and wears all black and rolls her eyes at the town where no one else is like her and everyone’s a bit scared of her for not like other girl reasons, oh, and she wears bright red lipstick. I’m assuming this is a reference to Little Red’s riding hood.
Ruby is stalked through the woods by a strange man but she kind of likes it, meanwhile her sister has ‘episodes’ where she zones out and says strange things. As she’s walking home one night, Ruby is attacked by one wolf and saved by another, who is injured in the process so she takes him into her house. In the morning, there’s no longer a wolf in the house, but instead a naked man.
And what follows is a meandering plot that doesn’t really go anywhere. Oh, and the MMC is called Rafe, which it’s not great if your two main characters both have names starting with the same letter and with the same amount of letters. There’s so much repetition here, and Rafe is so incredibly whiny. I like a dark, broody hero as much as the next person (if not more, at times) but all of Rafe’s ‘problems’ feel almost non-existent or of his own doing. He’s quite mean to his brothers, and when they’re in scenes together – usually when Rafe is asking for help – he explodes at them for what feels like no reason.
The whole push/pull thing between him and Ruby feels so forced in, he goes from hot to cold faster than a summer day in Wales, in one scene he’ll be getting steamy with her only to literally run away. It’s not attractive for the MMC to be so all-over-the-place.
The characters read as juvenile, despite Ruby being in her early 20s and Rafe being so much older – they both come across as too immature to be in any long-term relationship. There’s a whole plotline about Ruby being attacked, the characters spend most of the novel trying to find any leads only to constantly not get a one, and this ‘plot’ wraps with such a weak ‘resolution’. Yes, it’s the first book, but to me first books should set up the world, introduce just enough to keep you going into the second, but not leave things so nothing is actually resolved by the end. Oh, great, everyone seems to think they’re all safe now, except…how do they possibly know that? No one seems to question it.
There’s a constant thing of Rafe worrying about being a monster, and rather than it showing he’s not the monster he thinks, he’s violent and quick tempered, so Ruby just goes “I want the monster”. Like, fine, but Rafe carries so many red flags it all feels a bit…toxic.
I gave this one two stars because parts weren’t all bad, and the SPAG is pretty good. But I won’t be picking up book 2, even though the side characters introduced were more interesting than the actual main couple we were supposed to care about.
Reading Challenge
Barbie Reading Challenge
Prompt: Home – You think you know about me. Well, I know me better – A book from your favourite genre
Progress: 3/17 Completed
Unwrapping Words 