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.

Book Babblings *spoilers*

The King by J.R. Ward


*Contains Spoilers*

The Nitty Gritty: The First Family of the Brotherhood is back with a vengeance with a side of baby fever. Wrath and Beth are trying to find time to just be Wrath and Beth and not the Bling King and the Half Blood Queen, but the Band of Bastards and the Glymera are trying their best to ruin the royals good time.

Assail is on a mission. His female has been kidnapped and he is going to find her. No matter who he has to ghost in the process.

Trez is running from an arranged marriage and trying his best to screw his way out of it. the s'Hibe is working hard to drag the shadow back into the Territory and his destiny, but the Chosen Selena has wormed her way into his head and his heart.

Opening Line: "Long live the King"

The Good: The sex was adequate in this book, but its starting to become a little interchangeable.

The Bad: There is and was no reason for this book to be 573 pages. Just no reason. None at all. In her earlier books that were 250 pages she packed more in between those pages than she managed to slap in 573 pages of this book.

I am just at the point where I don't gave a rat's furry behind about anyone or any vampire that's not in the Brotherhood. I mean these other side stories took up half the dang on book. I mean yeah Sola is the bad girl or whatever but frankly I don't care about her. I mean we hardly get to see the Brothers that we fell in love with. V gets a few talking point and a vision. Rhage gets a two liner in there book. Butch gets a one liner and oh we finally get a see a bit more of John Matthew.

Its just all the side line plot stories and characters are over shadowing the main characters. Which I think Ward is wasting a good opportunity for spin off series featuring the whole cast of characters that we are getting in the books about the Brotherhood. I mean she has created an awesome little community around the Brotherhood that she could make an entire series about. But give me the Brotherhood. I mean this is the first book that we've seen Rhage actually speak since Lover Unleashed.

I'm just sick of the main characters only getting 30% of the book.

So Beth goes to bed one night and wakes up the next morning and wham she had a baby bump and she's four months pregnant....um....riiiiiiiiiight. But oh that's explained away because she is a half-human vampire. So yeah there's the answer.

No I don't think so.

The shower scene with Sola and Assail.....yeah I need to take a clorax bath after reading that. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but a guy that comes on your face without at least asking doesn't respect you and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I thought the scene was beyond the pail for me.

I've got my panties in a wad over the Shadows. Not with them personally other than them hijacking the storyline, but I've got a problem with them as "not" black characters.

Yeah, yeah I read Ward's flimsy excuse for why they are black but not really black because they aren't humans and Shadows don't prescribe to the human connotation with race, blah, blah, blah.

Sing that song for someone else sweetheart. I'm not buying. You have caucasian characters in your story and not once did you ever make a point of them separating their species from their race. But the one time you veer of the white default party line and give us characters of color you slip their wings. Then we get that "Shadows think anything white is ill" BS but then Trez screws anything white and bonds with Selene who happens to be white.

But it doesn't stop there. Everything that she uses to describe Trex and iAm are African American characteristic markers. Thick full lips, dark skin, close shaved faded hair. So everything about them screams black but they aren't black. Oh and I love the little race card pulling you threw in there. We get a whole internal monologue from Trez about how he isn't black and that if humans want to call him black and treat him accordingly they are going to get dealt with *cue eye-roll*

So come on Ward if you are going to dip your toe in the ethnic pool you might as well jump in.

You are giving your white characters the chance and the space to be white. Even the gay ones get to be gay in all their colorful glory, give your characters of color the same space.

Final Thoughts: Well I hate to say it but I think its truly hard for an author to maintain a book series past 7 or 8 books. This is the 3rd series that I'm having to drop because I can't take it anymore. The author just gets lazy and starts slapping together anything to give us. Yes I know how much work goes into writing any book. I'm an aspiring author myself. So I get it, but I also know how much writers fall in love with their characters and Ward is doing the brothers a disservice. I'm going to give her one more book because I stuck it out with Harris and True Blood, but that's it. I expect better from her because she has given it to me in the past.