I loved this book and had fun reading it! Rea is one of the best middle grade main characters I've ever read about and I'm excited to see more from this author!

"Rea and the Blood of the Nectar" by Payal Doshi is a captivating middle-grade fantasy that takes readers on a magical journey through the vibrant landscapes of India. The story centers around Rea, a twelve-year-old girl who discovers a mysterious portal to an enchanted realm and embarks on a quest to save her twin brother. Doshi skillfully blends elements of mythology, adventure, and family bonds to create a compelling narrative. The lush descriptions immerse readers in a world filled with mythical creatures and ancient secrets. With its engaging plot, relatable protagonist, and rich cultural details, "Rea and the Blood of the Nectar" is a delightful and imaginative tale that appeals to readers of all ages.

This book was a mixed bag for me.
The plot started off intriguing and I loved reading through the first half of the book but the pacing was strange and too many plot holes started popping up here and there. The characters were well-written and I was invested in them. However, at some point, it felt like too many things were going on and the author was trying to do too much. The worldbuilding was definitely the weaker aspect of this book.
I'm on the fence with this book overall.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I absolutely loved Rea and the Blood of the Nectar! Darjeeling was a cool place, but I especially loved Astranthia. Doshi's writing was atmospheric but fast paced. It was an exciting adventure, and I am looking forward to the next one!

I found this to be a fun and fast read! I really enjoyed following our main character Rea we join her on an adventure to free and find Rohan. I feel like this was such a sweet and fun story and perfect for fans of Aru Shah by Roshani Chokshi. I wish the pacing has been better but would love to see this on more recommendation list for middle grade readers.

The cover immediately drew me to this middle grade book. The summary was second. I adore reading about other lands and I absolutely enjoy when little girls learn the power of friendship and family through a high stakes trek to a different world as dangerous as Australia… even if it has a different name. Imagine learning that you’re a princess, have magic, and losing your brother all in the same night… and then having to learn to use said magic to rescue said brother.

This was my first time trying a MiddleGrade novel and unfortunately it wasn't for me and I ended up DNFing after around 20%. More about that in a moment, let's talk about what I did like about this book.

I personally think for the audience intended, it seemed like a great read. I liked the writing style and the main character Rea, was someone I think I would have really enjoyed getting to know. I have also read other reviews and I found the story itself seems enjoyable with the sense of adventure and secrets.

However, as I previously said, this is intended towards a younger audience I couldn't quite get on board with it. I felt it was too young for my personal taste. My opinion is nothing against this book or the author, it's just my preferences as a reader.

I don't like to rate books I have DNF'd as I don't feel it is fair on the book, but NetGalley requires this which is why I have given it the rating I have.

This was a very refreshing middle grade fantasy series set in India! I found the characters to be very likable. The story itself starts slow but eventually picks up. I found the world-building to be very unique! Overall, middle school children will love this novel! I recommend this for fans of Art Shah and the End of Time, The Serpent’s Secret, and The Night Diary!

A dark and magical adventure awaits any interested reader! This was such an imadingative story about an Indians girl, named Rea, who struggles with being seen by her family. She is constantly being compared unfavorably to her twin brother Rohan. So, on their twelfth birthday Rohan disappears mysteriously, It is up to Rea to find him and bring her twin home. On this quest Rea is drawn into a magical land of fairies, an evil queen, family secrets, and an epic quest. A super read you can't help but want to join!

I am so in love with this book! The world building is absolutely amazing and I was quite amazed at what it managed to fit into a relatively short book.

I am so glad that this isn't the last book in this world because I need to get back!

The only reason that I didn't rate it 5 stars was that I found the main character a little unreasonable at times and it bothered me. Don't let that put you off picking it up though! Leela's character alone is worth reading this book for. I wish she could be my best friend ❤️

Just seemed too young for my middle schoolers. I was excited because I have a significant Indian population, but my kiddos have moved on from sparkles and evil queens without a reason for being evil. Great cover though.

A middle grade fantasy novel set in India!! Uhm yes please. I am woefully behind in reading this, but I’m so excited about it.

You have the chosen one(Rea), an evil Queen, a patriarch to smash, and a brother who needs rescuing! It has Narnia and Alice in Wonderland vibes all while providing a look into the Indian culture. It’s a fun adventure, set up by family secrets, and a magical realm Rea never knew existed.

I loved the world building but could have used a bit more. All in all I loved the story and hope to read more!

Rea and The Blood of the Nectar is a middle-grade fantasy series that’s set in a tiny village off of the city of Darjeeling, and it follows the story of twins Rea and Rohan on their twelfth birthday as their innocent little rebellion of a rendezvous out into the village for a midnight celebration with their friends, against their mother’s wishes, brings them so much more than they bargained for.

Off the bat, let me tell you, it’s just so very heartwarming to just look at this book. The cover in and of itself fills me with all kinds of happy, fluffy feelings. I know it shouldn’t really be as big a deal as it is to me, but seeing a little brown girl on that cover always gives me such a serotonin boost that this book gets points for just existing in that form.

Now, onto the meat of the story! The plot takes off when, the morning of their twelfth birthday, Rea wakes up to find her brother Rohan missing, and her mother and grandmother despairing over it. She feels an immense amount of guilt over this happening, because she leaves him behind the night before, and her family sort of gives up on finding him ever, which angers her. All this spurs her into action, and with the help of her friend Leela, Rea vows to find her brother and bring him back home. What she doesn’t anticipate is this investigation of hers taking her across the border between realms into the strange and wonderful world of Astranthia, a world that she comes to learn is as much a part of her as Darjeeling is, only she was never told of it.

As a middle-grade portal fantasy, this story has a pretty standard plot structure. There’s the over-the-top, almost ridiculous fantasy world that Rea is thrown into, and she is somehow a very important part of its history and its future - she’s The Chosen One, of course-, and there’s the quest she must go on with the help of her trusty sidekicks. It’s also kind of Alice in Wonderland-y, in a way, what with there being an evil, power hungry queen, and Rea, who must beat her at her own game to get her brother back. These things aren’t essentially bad, per se, but I do feel that they lent the story a certain predictability, and took away from the mystery element of it all. It was still a fun little adventure, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like it would’ve been great if we saw things being shaken up a little bit more.

One of the things that irked me the most, however, was the world-building when it came to the land of Astranthia. It was all pretty inconsistent, and mostly felt like a jumbled up version of amusing and fantastical elements that can exist in a world just shoved together. I feel like that really made the story easy to fall out of often, especially since the girls’ fascination with Astranthia is a huge part of their journey to find Rohan. I think this kind of world can work with a story with as high stakes as this one, as long as you’re able to work around exposing parts of it a certain way, and this was not it. (Also, a lot of the parts of this fantasy world felt very anglicized to me. I mean, this is definitely a very subjective opinion, but it was a little too
Barbie: Fairytopia - which, there is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t really see how a world like that adds to the story the author is trying to tell here in any way. And how Darjeeling being the previous backdrop brings anything to the plate. Like it’s just this very disjointed element that took me out of the book a lot is what I’m trying to say here).

Actually, the writing itself was definitely something that bothered me throughout. There’s definitely a lot of interesting things in this story, but the style of writing just did not gel with all those ideas, in my opinion. There were parts when the writing felt very stilted, and there was also a whole lot of telling and not showing. The pacing was also a little all over the place which made all the character development and growing dynamics between all the different characters feel very disingenuous and forced. There was definitely a solid beginning, middle and end to each character’s journey in the story, and it really had the potential to work out really well, but I felt like it was lacking severely in execution.

The ending of the book was also very confusing. Well, the beginning of the third act, too, to be honest. There’s a lot of political stuff that’s supposed to be going on, and there’s scenes which are supposed to be “battle scenes”, but it was all kind of confusing, and more often than not, felt like something that came out of the blue. There’s just too many plotlines happening all the time, but the focus is always on Rea, and nothing else gets enough of a significant mention even when it involves one of the other important sidekicks, so it feels like it’s a plot thread that’s spawning into existence spontaneously in the middle of some random scene.

Also, the magnitude of these scenes is also always unclear, I feel. For instance, the first “battle” that’s a protest gone violent just read like a minor scuffle to me, but then in the aftermath you have all these hundreds of people injured and dead, and an entire army retreating and it was all a little AAAAH-inducing, you know? (Also the whole thing about this country is they don’t want to “disrupt tradition” as their current Queen is doing and I really don’t want to touch that moral with a ten foot pole like GIRL WHAT).

As much as I am complaining about this book, I do think it’s still a relatively fun read? Like it’s a middle-grade fantasy!! It’s obviously fun!! The characters are, despite their sometimes insanely out of pocket behaviour and mood changes, really cute. The friendships are fun to read about! And the complicated relationship the Rea has with her family is also pretty well done, and struck a chord with me. The parts with Queen Razya were really fun to read, and there’s a lot of backstory there that we didn’t get to see, and I definitely want to know about more!

Also the magic system is super cool! I liked that despite being a middle-grade, the author did not shy away from the slight body horror of blood magic. There were also these really cute paris that were so freaking adorable, I could NOT deal. There’s also all these fantastical creatures spread out, and there’s parts of this story that WORK, and work really well!! It’s just that these are all, at the end of the day, still parts, and they don’t all fit well perfectly, which is something that makes this book feel a little off.

More than anything, I do see the value in having a story featuring little girls from a tiny village in Darjeeling be the main characters in an epic fantasy story, but at the same time, I do feel disappointed, overall, because there was really so much potential, but it felt like a bunch of great, fun ideas held together with sellotape and the power of my will to like this book. So, like, yeah, I do think this book can be a fun read! But I also think it’s definitely not for everyone, and it has a lot of kinks that need working out!

I received this e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for a review, thank you.
What a magical, breathtaking adventure this book is. Set in the villages around the Darjeeling tea plantations, we join Rea as she’s about to turn 12. However, her twin brother doesn’t want to celebrate with her and her mother won’t let her out of the house, so Rea hatches her own plan. When her brother mysteriously disappears that night, Rea is determined to find him and try to make her Amma realise she’s just as important as her twin brother. And so we set out on a magical adventure that will test Rea’s character and take her on a journey of discovery. This book has everything you hope to find in an adventure: friendships, sibling rivalry, family secrets and a breathtaking setting. I can’t wait to share this with my readers at school and really look forward to the next book in the series.

Not only that but there is a big preference in her family for her twin brother Rohan. Her mother and grandmother favor him so much. And this could definitely be why she is the way that she is, but the parents' favoritism goes so far that she gets into trouble for being on her best behavior while her brother gets off scot-free. I can't stand the double standard.
And when we finally get to the fantasy world (about 1/3 of the way through the book), the Queen is evil. There doesn't appear to be a motivation either. She is just evil.

I've been pushing myself to read more of this, but because of the above, I'm not finding any connection to the story or anyone to root for. I was really hoping to love this one because some of my favorite fantasy books are middle grade, but this one was definitely not for me.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really fun book to read! I have been hearing such great things about it for so long that I was a little nervous about reading it. I tend to have that anxiousness about books that have a lot of hype around them. In this case, though, I was not disappointed.

I felt like Rea was easy to identify with. She’s a loner but also lonely, and that absolutely resonated with me, especially in thinking back to my own life at that age. She’s also smart and motivated, though her trust issues kind of trip her up sometimes. I loved that the story explored her relationships with others and gave her opportunities to grow both as an individual and as a friend/sister/leader.

REA AND THE BLOOD OF THE NECTAR is full of playful moments. Sometimes they verge on being a bit cheesy, but I kind of liked those moments, too. It was nice to read a book that was both rich and beautiful but that didn’t take itself too seriously and embraced the silly and fun, too. That made it really fun to read.

The pacing of the story seemed pretty even to me, too. I felt like the stakes kept going up, and the tension definitely built as the story progressed toward the moment where Rea had to confront her antagonist.

I think readers who enjoyed THE FIREBIRD SONG by Arnée Flores or VASILISA by Julie Mathison will love this one.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Cute story, very like Percy Jackson! Thanks so much to Netgalley and to the publisher for the advanced copy of the book!

As an adult with young kids, I still love reading middle-grade books. It makes my inner child happy. AND it helps me to find some amazing reads so that our bookshelf is stocked to the brim when my young ’uns reach middle-grade age and can actually read them. It’s also extremely important to me to support OwnVoices books and OwnVoices authors and diversify their bookshelf even before they are ready to read at this level.

I always love when I find middle-grade books that suck me in and make me feel like I’m not reading middle grade. That was definitely the case here when reading Rea and the Blood of the Nectar.

I almost finished Rea and the Blood of the Nectar in one day! I was so entranced with the setting, characters, and story that I could not stop reading. If I was reading it to my daughter, it would be me for once keeping her up late and saying -one more page!-

Can’t wait to re-read it with her when she’s old enough and to see where Rea’s story goes. I’d also love to re-read as an audiobook if one is made because I love audiobooks and it would be so helpful to hear the pronunciation of things like all the rich descriptions of the real-world setting, fantasy world setting, and even the food: pakoras, roti and dal, and thupkas.

I loved the adventure, Indian culture (festival of Diwali, one of the settings being Darjeeling tea plantations, kids playing cricket), magic in the real world with Rea’s travel to Astranthia, and the critical and realistic descriptions of relationships and feelings towards family and friends children and pre-teens will come across in their own lives either while reading or after.

I did find a twist in the first half to be predictable but again, this is Middle Grade so many of our young readers will probably be shocked by it and not expect it. I did like that the villain is multifaceted, and we get to see through their eyes a bit. That felt original and unexpected in this type of Middle-Grade fantasy.

Rea and the Blood of the Nectar is an important and most of all fun Middle Grade read for any fantasy lover’s bookshelf.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mango and Marigold press for my e-arc copy of Rea and the Blood of the Nectar. I received this e-arc free of charge. It was my choice to read it and I’m leaving this review voluntarily.

I was excited to read a middle-grade fantasy book that featured an Indian as the protagonist. I am pleased to say Rea and the Blood of the Nectar is a delightful beginning to a new middle-grade fantasy series.

The book is full of adventures. The author’s imagination runs wild which results in excellent world building. Astranthia is a vibrant world full of colors, varied flora, and magic, although it is speckled with darkness too. While it has paries (fairies) and winged horses to save the day, it also has monstrous serpent-lilies and terrifying banshees.

True to a fantasy book, there are obstacles at every turn which our protagonist, Rea, bravely overcomes. And true to a middle-grade book, she needs help from her friends to overcome some of them.

Doshi has created believable characters. Rea is a courageous albeit impulsive girl, while Leela proves to be a loyal and steadfast friend. Xeranther is a chatty person but turns out to be a determined boy. I loved the villain too. She was unapologetically dark. Yet, I felt her anguish and (misplaced) anger.

I also liked how poignantly Doshi describes Rea’s loneliness and the resulting angst. She has to battle poverty, hostile classmates, absence of her father, and a mother who favors her brother more. Favoritism towards the male child is the reality in many Indian households. I am glad Doshi captured this in Rea and the Blood of the Nectar.

One thing I would have liked more in this book is more descriptions of the town of Darjeeling. It is a beautiful hill station in my state (West Bengal). As such, in my humble opinion, it warranted a few more pages worth of description. The book resonates with the themes of selfless friendships, loyalty, courage, and finding oneself. Middle-grade children looking for an Indian main character in English fantasy novels will love this book.

Many thanks to the publisher for my copy of the book via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion on the book.