secondreadreviews

[secondreadreviews]

Three Books by Kelly Andrew: A Rambling Review

The first time I saw the book Your Bood My Bones, I was on a date with my husband. Life had been hard, money had been tight, and a trip to the bookstore to add to our TBRs seemed like the perfect low-cost outing to spend some time together. (It was.) I didn’t buy it, because I only had money for one or two and had already picked out other books further up my list. But the title and the image on the cover stuck with me, and, next paycheck willing, I ordered a copy off of Amazon. 

I read it in a day. It was dark and delicious and poignant, creepy and sweet and bitter, and I loved it. 

I knew I wanted to read it again, but I also had other books to read, so I set it aside and read other things until I saw the Owlcrate special edition. 

Gorgeous. Perfect. NEED.

I bought it. I immediately reread it, in its new form. 

And then I realized that Kelly Andrews had two more books set in the same world. Three days and one dying scream from my bank account later, and I’d read both The Whispering Dark and I Am Made of Death. 

And y’all. I have feelings. 

Spoilers ahead. Don’t like, scroll no further. 

Last warning!

While I loved I Am Made of Death a little less than the others (I’ll talk about why), and will probably address it a little less here as a result, all three are all beautiful, lyrical books that sucked me in and held me by the throat until the story was told and I could breathe again. I’ll probably do individual reviews later. For now, I’m just gonna talk about things I loved throughout this loosely-connected series that made me instantly add her upcoming book to my TBR, connected to this universe or not. 

First. The romance. This was especially well done in Your Blood My Bones and The Whispering Dark. Which, considering I usually hate the Childhood Sweetheart or Childhood Romance tropes, is insane for me to say. Most stories that include those tropes are too sweet for me. The romance is saccharine and instant and childish, even for characters who have ‘grown up and grown apart’ or ‘had a major falling out and parted ways in hatred.’ They come back together and the attraction is instant and sickening, interspersed with knock-down drag-out screaming fights to remind you how much they hate each other while they’re resisting the urge to jump each other’s bones.  

Ugh. 

Your Blood My Bones looked like it was going to be one of those. They’re childhood sweethearts. First kisses. But. Now they might also be each other’s first murders. They don’t fall right back into gooey sweetness. They never had any to begin with. They are the same as before and they are vastly different and they explore all of that with hands outstretched toward each other and knives behind their backs. Their memories of each other both feed and fight the attraction and the fury they feel for each other. And yet, they are never over the top, never too much. It’s delicate and hesitant and soft and so full of hurt that it makes my teeth ache. They are the perfect depiction of the question ‘can I still love you?’ because they actually ask it. Not only of each other, but of themselves. And it is a real question, and they find real answers. Did I, Can I, Do I? 

The Whispering Dark is billed as an obsessional romance. They met as children, and he never forgot. This could have been so horrifying and wrong. Disturbing in the most awful nauseating way. But it’s not. Again, I can’t help but attribute this to Andrew’s writing. The care with which she crafts sentences and scenes, the way she peels back the characters’ skin to bare their souls is done so perfectly that you can’t help but see and feel to the depths that they do. Darkness is something that curls up alongside the bones of Andrew’s characters, but love is something that lives in their bones, deeper and impossible to fully scrape clean. I love Colton’s love for Lane, no matter that it began in the heart of a dead 9 year old, and I love the way that hers for him is something that grows without force, without any of the demands that most ‘obsessive’ love interests would place. I can’t even describe how much I adore their relationship. I’m on my third reread solely because of this. 

I’m not as big a fan of the romance in I Am Made of Death only because it feels a little underwhelming compared to the previous two. Thomas and Vivienne don’t have the history that the other couples have, and less time to build a rapport. We get to see fewer of their moments, and it genuinely makes me sad, because in a way it feels like they are a couple solely because they were forced to spend time together, with little in common. But the romance, once established, is beautiful. It is all sharp edges and defensive chess moves, self loathing and self deprecation, and I thoroughly enjoyed the angle, the way that Tommy and Viv fit together by filling the blank spaces other people tore in them. It’s raw and realistic, and at times almost painful to read, and yet I couldn’t stop. 

There are two more aspects of these books that I loved, and the next one on my list is the power dynamic between the men and women. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good damsel in distress moment, and who doesn’t love a heroic entrance? But needing to be rescued shouldn’t make the female character weak (as it often seems to do.) None of Kelly Andrew’s girls can be described as weak, no matter that they all have a moment or two that requires their love interest to step up and remind the world that heroes still exist. All of the boys in the books are strong, and each of them usually has a little more to him than meets the eye. They are dangerous. And yet, more often than not, damsel or no, the girls are almost always the most dangerous things in the room. Wyatt’s emotions can channel life itself into bloom. Viv can kill with a word. Delaney can speak the dead awake. They may need help, but they are never helpless. They stand toe to toe with the boys, and no one can ever doubt that the footing is equal. Peter is described as a god. Wyatt is a match for any goddess. Colton could be a king of hell, and he himself compares Delaney to Persephone. I’m not a huge fan of power imbalances between main characters, and there isn’t any to be found here. 

And finally, these books have like, the best atmosphere I’ve read since Kelly Creagh.  

Seriously, the only reason it took me so long (4 days) to read all three of these books is because I had work. And I couldn’t run my audiobooks straight through because people wanted to talk to me. Not only are these books well-written enough to make my English-major heart flutter, but they’re lyrical and poetic. The descriptions are immersive and visceral. I could feel the stomach ache Wyatt and the boys got from eating candy. I drowned alongside Colton. I’m pretty sure one of my friends had a crybaby bracelet like the one Viv makes for Thomas. I lived alongside the characters while I read, and then they followed me into sleep when I had to put the book down for the night. 

As I said, I’ll probably do individual reviews later. But I had to get this out of my system. Which is what tumblr is for, right? Long random stream-of-consciousness rambles. Now I have to save for a physical copy of The Whispering Dark. Wish me luck!