BLOOD MOON by Alyxandra Harvey

Blood Moon
Alyxandra Harvey

Rating: C+
Synopsis from goodreads.com:
"I can still smell his blood, Lucy. I can smell it everywhere. It's in the grass, in the air, on me. I'm not safe." 

When the vampire tribes convene for the rare Blood Moon ceremonies, Solange Drake is plunged into a battle with her feral nature. The Drake brothers have been raised knowing they had to protect their younger sister at all cost. But forbidden magic and a mysterious stranger have put all of them in terrible danger.
Nicholas is going to have to make a difficult choice: between his girlfriend, Lucy, and his little sister, Solange - blood or love?


My thoughts on the book:
I have been waiting for this novel since I finished Bleeding Hearts. I've been a fan of this series since Hearts at Stake, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every book. However, Blood Moon fell flat for me. The novel was nothing like Harvey's former work, and Solange has gotten so annoying that I wanted to throw my Kindle out the window every time a chapter said it was being told from her POV (The POV alternated between Lucy, Solange, and Nicholas. Keiran narrated the epilogue). The pacing was slow, the plot was scattered, it ended on a cliffhanger and there was a distracting error. I'm pretty disappointed in this installment. I'll be reading the 6th (and perhaps final?) book in the series, just to see what happens. Maybe it'll be as good as the previous four were. 

My biggest pet peeve in this novel was Solange. She has turned into such a brat, I can't stand to read anything from her POV anymore. All she did was whine about how no one understands her and how hard her life is, then she throws fits, makes stupid decisions, and whines some more. Seriously, I wanted to stake her. I finally found out what was going on with her, but it would have been much more effective had that been disclosed earlier in the novel. Then maybe I wouldn't have been so irritated at her. I had to put the book down and walk away during every chapter she narrated. It took me five freaking days to read this book because of that. I really did not enjoy her chapters at all. 

There was so much going on in the plot that I couldn't really keep up. Apparently neither could Harvey because a lot of balls seemed to be dropped. Maybe loose ends will be tied up in the next book, but this one ended with nothing being answered. Literally nothing was resolved, and half of the plot threads started and didn't really progress at all. I mean sure, every new thing kept getting mentioned, but instead of actually, oh I don't know, wrapping something up, Harvey just kept introducing new problems. It got to be ridiculous. I don't even remember what the book was about, and I just finished it. And the cliffhanger is just ridiculous. Basically, Harvey had two characters act really out of character, then she ended it. Yea, thanks for that. There weren't enough unresolved plot threads already. I'm glad you added a couple of more. 

The error also took me out of the story. One error, which really bugged the crap out of me for about four chapters after I read it, was when Lucy was checking to see if her cell phone was working. She said it had a dial tone. Cell phones don't, and as far as I know, never have had dial tones. I mean everyone has a cell phone. Harvey should have known better than to write that, and an editor should have caught that and realized the mistake as well. 

The chapters from Lucy and Nicholas' points of view really brightened the story for me. I enjoyed those chapters immensely and kept wanting to hear more from them. Lucy and Nicholas are my favorite characters and couple in the series, though. I wish there had been more of them and less Solange, though I understand why some of the story had to be told from her POV. Otherwise, we wouldn't know what's going on with her. That's one question that was actually (finally) answered in Blood Moon, and I'm glad for that little bit of information. I also enjoyed Keiran's narration, and I hope he gets to narrate more in the next book. I feel like we got to know him a lot better in this novel, and I like him more for it. 

Overall, I'm really disappointed in this book. It's not horrible, and I finished it, but I expected more from Harvey and this series. If you're a fan of the Drake Chronicles, then I recommend you read it, if nothing else, just to know what happens next. For now, I'll just hope that Book #6 is better. 

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