House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas takes us to a world where humans, fae, shifters, merfolk, angels, and so many more species of mythical creatures roam the world simultaneously. Bryce Quinlan, a half-fae half-human young woman, is deemed as the ultimate party girl, together with her best friend Danika Fendyr. But their wild ways come to an end when a string of murders shakes the entire city. Years later, while the supposed killer is behind bars, eerily similar murders start taking place again. And because Bryce has a personal connection to the situation, she is asked to help investigate with the help of Hunt Athalar, a fallen angel assigned to keeping her safe.
257 days.
It took me 257 days to finish this behemoth of a book.
And yet, I have no regrets.
Okay, I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not a huge fantasy reader, and I don't think I've ever really read any adult (or new adult) fantasy. And I'm also not very used to reading huge books, so those two facts combined made House of Earth and Blood extremely daunting for me. Which is why it took me such a long time to read, as I'd sometimes go weeks without picking it up.
With that being said, after I got through the first, I'd say, third of the book, the intrigue level shot up. Admittedly, it took a while for me to settle into the world and get to like the characters, but when I got there - WOW. I just wanted to drop everything and continue reading it. Safe to say that I have now fallen completely in love with a lot of the characters in this world - Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn... They are all precious and I just want to scoop them up and keep them safe forever.
One of my favourite things about this book is Sarah J. Maas's writing. I found her writing to be extremely skillful. Personally, I feel like she has the best mix of description and dialogue - and her dialogue is really good, at that! Overall, it's rare that I find an author whose writing I find essentially flawless, but Maas's writing is just that.
As for the plot, I do feel like there were some bits throughout the middle of the novel that could have been removed. However, at the same time, I'm torn, because even though I feel like these sections weren't exactly helpful to the plot itself, they were very important in terms of character development. So, scratch that - nothing could have been removed, essentially. There was one plot point that didn't really sit well with me, but I won't go into any details as it's kind of a huge spoiler.
In conclusion, I absolutely loved this book. I don't usually give half-stars, but this came out as a 4/4.5 star read on CAWPILE, and giving it just a 4 feels wrong, so I'm calling it a 4.5 star book. I highly recommend picking this up if you haven't already - especially since the sequel is OUT NOW!
Have you read this book yet? Let me know what you've thought of it!
Casey