***This review has also been posted on The Social Potato

Silver in the Blood was sadly not all I wanted it to be. It’s not a bad book by any means, it’s very creative and fun but it is also a little slow and needed a little work in the character department.

It takes almost a third of the book for us to finally see all the fun action and I don’t think there was enough of all the good stuff happening to make up for the initial slowness. To be fair, I didn’t mind the slow bits too much. I was never bored and I did like reading those details since they helped built up the suspense, but I feel like there was too much time spent building that suspense and not enough time spent actually making the wait worth it.

I would like to start off by saying that this book isn’t as dark as it sounds. It’s actually quite light hearted (and not in a bad way), it’s cute and fun to read and I enjoyed reading from the POVs of both the main characters.

Dacia and Lou are spoilt young ladies traveling to Romania to meet their mothers’ side of the family. When I say spoilt, I don’t mean it in a bad way. They are from wealthy, influential families but they aren’t horrible, mean girls. I always found both characters to be likeable (even when Dacia made some questionable decisions.)

Dacia is the more outspoken of the two and while she did make some questionable decisions she was also not a bad person. She wasn’t stupid and really, what’s wrong with someone who enjoys receiving attention (not in an obnoxious way.) She can stand up for herself and won’t let people get away with shit.

Lou is in some ways the exact opposite of Dacia. Where Dacia is outspoken and sometimes impulsive, Lou is shy and likes to think things through. In that way, Dacia and Lou complement each other. I definitely found Lou to be more likeable (since I could relate to her better) but what I also liked was that both the girls were likeable. You didn’t have to hate one to like the other.

Both girls develop over the course of the book and I loved watching them both turn into the mature, confident women they were by the end of the novel.

One of the drawbacks of this book is the secondary characters. The love interests have no real depth to them (which was a pity.) Lou and Dacia’s family were talked about in such vague terms that I never found myself feeling anything towards them. Their villainous grandmother was cartoonishly evil to the point where her motives made no sense. I also didn’t like how we never saw enough of Lou’s mother. She is made out to be a bad guy but we never really see her do anything bad (besides siding with the Grandma). I never understood the sudden change in Lou's mom. I felt the same way about Aunt Kate. Although in her case, I never saw her being good so when she is talked about in such nice terms, I was like huh? What do you mean?  Isn’t she a douche? There was also the question of Lou’s father who I would have liked to see more of. Basically I felt like the adults and the love interests needed to be round instead of flat.

This book isn’t very romance heavy but the problem is that I never really saw the romantic relationships develop. There is the tension, yes but I wanted to see that flourish instead of the automatic transition into ‘we are in love.’ How long have you known each other for again??? BUT ALSO I just wanted to see the couples, I wanted to see the banter, I wanted to see them work together as a team but none of that really happened on a large enough scale for me to enjoy the dynamic.

The world building in the novel was nice. I liked the Claw, Wing and Smoke aspects (although I might have enjoyed seeing some more of that.) I also liked the Romanian setting. It definitely added a certain darkness to the atmosphere (although keep in mind what I said earlier about this not being a dark novel.)

The first book in this series may not have won me over completely but I still enjoyed it and will definitely be watching out for the sequel. I’d recommend this to anyone looking for a fun fantasy novel to read.