Here's the gist: Abby and Rocco are siblings who recently lost their mother. What's more, Abby is also being bullied by a trio of guys at school, which makes her life even more unbearable. Then one day she discovers she's special, and maybe not even human, which changes her life forever. Yada, yada, yada.

The blurb for the book seemed interesting, and that's why I requested and received a copy via Netgalley. But that's all that book is - interesting.

I do give the author credit for keeping my attention the whole way through. I wanted to know what happened next. I wanted to know more about this world and the powers and the fate of the characters, and that's why I can't just diss on this book. However, the lack of answers and poor world-building irked me the more I read. Not just that, there were some pretty big holes in the story.

I hated Abby. I get she's traumatized but I don't need to know every single one of her thoughts, especially if they're repeated over and over again. That and the bullying was not realistic at all. At least, the reasons for it happening and not getting fixed, it just didn't make sense! And don't get me started on the big bad. I don't want to spoil the book, but it just didn't make sense!

Don't get me wrong. I liked the author's writing style, and because it did keep my interest to the end, I can't just give it one star. But frankly, I'm not even interested in reading the sequel.

I really enjoyed this book. The world-building was creative and unique and I've never seen anything too similar to it. One thing I would say is that a few of the descriptions became very repetitive, especially at the beginning of the book. I like how most of the characters got development and you got to see their motives eventually. I would say that the villain reveal was very obvious. It's very fitting for the age range it's aimed at and doesn't underestimate what teenagers understand. I also liked that Abby wasn't an annoying main character. She had her flaws and she seemed human and relatable. Overall, I would recommend this for anyone who enjoyed Percy Jackson and is looking for a more YA version.

I thought the premise of the book was pretty interesting based on the summary and thought a lot could be done with the family curse. I wasn't sure if this would be fantasy/magic based or sci-fi in a contemporary setting but after finishing this book, I have some thoughts.

The sibling relationship was the strongest aspect of the story. Abby and Rocco's relationship started off a bit strange to me, but by the end was pretty much the only thing that I found convincing. Their shared grief at losing both parents gave it the emotional impact that the story was using to drive the narrative.

On the other hand, I was highly confused about the world-building and magic system and had to suspend disbelief through a good portion of the book. Abby is the next target due to the blood curse but let's send her off to school alone anyways, even though there are supernatural creatures after her. The fight sequences and bullying felt over-the-top to me as well; for someone who is going through so much grief, the administration at her school sure do turn a blind eye to her literally getting pummeled a lot. Her fight scenes also felt overly drawn out and graphic to the point where I found myself skimming over the scenes because it didn't feel impactful to have it go on for so long. I think the weakness of this book is that for its length, there were a number of scenes that felt unnecessary and could have been solidified more in terms of driving the plot forward.

I would have appreciated more insight on what the blood curse is about and the other supernatural aspects of the story in order to explain why the reader should care about what's going on. Emotionally, I couldn't connect with Abby so it became difficult to root for her even though she was the protagonist who did learn to control her new powers. For subsequent books, I would like to see more focus on Abby's character development and to see her grow into her powers as a person rather than having the action happen to her.