Book Babblings *SPOILERS*

Blood Kiss by JR Ward

Nitty Gritty: Paradise, daughter of the First Advisor to the King wants out of her gilded cage. Her great escape plan? The revived Blackdagger Brotherhood's training program? She wants to learn how to fight to break free of the glymera's stifling control. Only the sexy and mysterious Craeg throws a monkey wrench on her plans.

Butch, the Dhestroyer, is knee deep in his own troubles, and if he wants to climb out he is going to have to take a hard look at himself ad make some changes or risk losing the one thing he loves more than life itself.

Opening Line: "Some graduations happened in private." 

The Good: Um well I was glad to see more Vishous. I honestly wish Ward would have let Butch and V be together. Their relationship is a hellva lot more interesting than Doc Jane's and Marissa's ever could be.

The Bad: I wanted to like it I really did. Ward promised to take us back to out first loves. She promised us the BDB as we remember them. Um...I'm not convinced she knows them anymore. This book was a giant pain in the ass to read.

There is an entire scene where all the women in the house have a girls night and just veg out watching Magic Mike XXL something scores of women did when the movie actually came out. So the girls are having a good time and just relaxing. Well you would think the boys would take the time to do something manly, like go hunt, pull up a game on TV, or get lost in Assassin's Creed Syndicate for a few hours, but no they sit around the dinner table and whine about the movie the girls are watching. I mean they were one razor blade away from killing themselves about the girls night movie. It was sickening and disgusting. That's not love. That's possession. And the Brothers are real good at that.

At first I thought it was sexy and mysterious but there is something highly wrong with the relationships in this universe. The women are just interchangeable holes to shove their thick man parts into.

And the women are just stepford sexbots. None of them have much of a personality. All of them are small, delicate, with smooth cream skin and blonde hair. Except for Mary and Wellsie. During sex they want to mark their women to ward off other suitors as if the woman is incapable of letting other men know that she is happily attached.

Everyone is starting to run together. Everyone sounds the same, and they all sound like a pack of teenagers at the mall on a Saturday. In the beginning Tohr was a pretty sophisticated guy, and yeah he went through a gut punch over Wellsie. Hell I was hurt when she died, but now he sounds like one of those little Autobots from the second Transformer movies, and that ain't a good thing! Lassiter is the only one with discernible personality, and he outlived his usefulness 5 books ago.

There is a murder that happens pretty close to the beginning of the book and Marissa is consumed with solving it. Butch even polishes off his old detective skills and gets involved. They scratch out some clues and follows up with them and then the murder is solved in two pages...not even a plausible conclusion to the murder! It's almost like Ward was so wrapped up in the sex she forget about the subplot she introduced and then just slapped together an ending to get Paradise and Craeg back together.

And we just keep going around and around with this war with the Lessers. Its like enough already!! I'm tired of it frankly. It was awesome in the beginning when the Lessers had a little class about them, but now why are the Brothers even fighting them now? They're petty drug dealers, who frankly would rather not even deal with the vampires. They're trying to stack cake and deal with the vamps is getting in the way of that. So its like the vamps are the only ones keeping up with this war.

I am getting sick and tired of the slut shaming going on in this book. Every guy wants to spit garbage about the chick vamp that likes a little side action because her husband has one foot in the Fade, but she's made out to be the whore. Excuse me? So what are all the "males" that have slept with her? You can go kick rocks with that.

And please don't get me started on Paradise (could her name be anymore tragic) and Craeg. Paradise is a girl of the glymera. Sheltered, treasured, pampered and treated like a beautiful doll her entire life. The Brotherhood sent out applications for their training program to beef up their numbers, and she thinks "Yes I want to join this dangerous program to protect the race simply because my bonehead friend says girls can't do it." No other reason, and when she gets into the program she spends the entire time panting after another trainee to the point that she halfway kills herself on a treadmill. Nearly 20 stitches later and the girl still can't control her libido like an adult. She's acting like a tween with her first One Direction Crush. But we are supposed to think of her as a warrior? But Ward spends page after page after page establishing what an awesome fighter and warrior Craeg is fighting Peyton in a fistfight and then Butch in a knife fight, Paradise gets to outlast everyone by walking in a circle, but she's a great warrior. Craeg is a walking tool of the highest order. His family was slaughtered during the raids because the family his dad worked for wouldn't let them into the safe room, yeah that was messed up. So now he hates all of the aristocrats. Like every single one of them killed his family. Yeah, thats the level of maturity we've got going on here.

I was just so pissed off at this book, like how could such a great premise have gone so horribly wrong? Come on Ward! Come on! We are 14 books into this! This isn't your first novel! I've read fanfiction of your books better than this. I mean I'm started to feel insulted here.

Final Thoughts: This is the last book by JR Ward that I am going to read. Not even going to bother getting subsequent books from the library anymore. I just can't with her.