From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout - Romantasy Book Review

This book felt like the tip of the iceberg of an adventure of a series – I thoroughly enjoyed it!

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout is available to buy, click below!

The first thing to know about Poppy (Penellaphe) is that she is the Maiden – the one chosen by the gods. She is supposed to remain pure, always protected by her guards, until her Ascension, but she has a rebellious streak – she’s learnt to defend herself, goes with her guard to help protect the city from monsters, and even escapes her confines on a forbidden trips to the Red Pearl, where she meets the mysterious new guard that has the city talking.

Rather than enemies to lovers, this was royal guard to lovers to enemies and back again – a fun twist on the usual! There was certainly a lot of tension between Poppy and her new guard, Hawke. It’s slow burn as anything Poppy does aside from sit in her room or wander aimlessly through the castle is forbidden to her – especially relationships of any kind.

The monsters and fantasy creatures of the book are also either unique or a twist on the usual. Though I’ve heard that this is a book that needs to be on every romantasy girly’s wishlist, I had little idea about the contents of it – so I was surprised to find out we had something of a vampire thing going on, although not like vampires you’ve ever heard of before!

I’m not entirely sure why this book was up on Netgalley recently when it was published a few years ago, but I’m so glad it was as it gave me the opportunity to finally dive into a series that’s been on my wishlist for a long time (I guess maybe that’s why it was there, great marketing!).

I’ll be completely honest, for about the half the book I was enjoying it, but only so much that I planned to mark it as 4 stars. It took me longer than usual to read for some reason, even though it wasn’t complicated or massively heavy. The writing style and worldbuilding felt early ACOTAR level – as in, there wasn’t a huge amount to take in straight away, and the world at large didn’t have huge structures you needed to understand, but it was still well built. Maybe this is why it took me longer to really get a feel for it – because we’re seeing it through Poppy’s eyes, our view of that world is so narrow, and you definitely know that you’re missing a lot, because she is. Things like the details of the Ascension and what it really means to be the Maiden are kept deliberately obscure.

Read more of my romantasy book reviews:

When the threads and hints throughout the book all started to come together in a big reveal towards the end is when I really started to love it. The story was peppered with little details that made so much more sense later on, and I enjoyed pulling these together. There were moments that were predictable, and others not so much – I always love that!

I hadn’t meant to start a new series before the end of the year, but here we are – whoops! I’m very excited to continue with this one!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.