Blood Moon ~ Alyxandra Harvey review

In honor of yesterday being Canada Day, who deserves some celebration? Justin Bieber? No. Ryan Gosling? Nope, not even him (well not here).  Joshua Jackson? Nope, not even as much as this past week makes me want to watch Dawson's Creek.

Who does then? Alyxandra Harvey, of course, author of The Drake Chronicles - the latest installment of which Blood Moon came out in June!

[ If for some kooky reason you haven't read the other Drake Chronicles book yet, don't start with Blood Moon -not because it lacks brilliance, but because they're all brilliant and don't work as stand-alone books! My reviews of #1: Hearts at Stake, #2: Blood Feud, #3: Out for Blood, #4: Bleeding Hearts ]

Blood Moon (Drake Chronicles #5)
Walker & Company
June 19, 2012
320 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from TBD/or Amazon

With the blood moon only days way and the vampire clans already converging on Drake land, Blood Moon, shows us what Bleeding Hearts only started to: with Solange fighting a war within herself, the greatest danger the Drakes face might not be from visiting vampires.


Seriously? Seriously? You're doing this to me again Alyxandra Harvey? After the ending of Bleeding Hearts, I was dying and now you're ending Blood Moon like this? Admittedly it might not be as bad . . . then again when you pair the two of them together (or all of the books/the story as a whole), it might be worse. Worse, as in really better, or Do-I-really-Have-to-Wait-for-the-Next-Book-to-Come-Out-because-You're-Killing-Me-With-These-Endings worse.

While I have loved seeing more of the different brothers in each book, it was nice to have this one brought back a bit. Blood Moon is told from Lucy, Nicholas and Solange's perspectives. Not only was it necessary for the plot (especially considering the ending of the previous book) but it was also nice to 'hear' from them again.

Lucy will always be one of my favorite characters - this series or any other - and it's great when she's balanced out with Nicholas. As the book involves Solange warring with herself, Lucy needed to be one of the narrators, not having her perspective, insight on all of it would have made the story feel less than whole.

One thing that can't go unnoticed with Blood Moon or any other Alyxandra Harvey book, is her writing. Her love of poetry comes through in not only her characters quoting it, but also her own writing. It's not flower-y and a lot of descriptions come from character observations (as opposed to author statements) but the analogies and similes, brilliant and/or quirky phrases and descriptions she does use catch me nearly every time.

They're phrases you might expect to see kept for the end of a paragraph or until a break in the text but in Blood Moon they're just part of the text. It really makes the book that much better.

A lot of series can't make it to five books while still holding - if not exceeding - the quality present in the first book. The Drake Chronicles has proven able to do that with Blood Moon. The characters are still as enjoyable, the plot is developing and thickening, the new characters that are being added add things.



Rating: 10/10


giant thank you to Bridget at Bloomsbury for my copy to review!