Siblings, Clem and Chris, are still grieving their father's death when their mother becomes ill. No treatment - magical or otherwise - has been able to save their mother from her ailment.

After a grim medical check-up, they discovered their mother wasn't ill. She'd actually been cursed.

Left reeling the from the betrayal, they're determined to discover who could and would set out to destroy their family.

The level of deceit and hatred amongst the characters and community is twisted over the generations into a raw and tangible thing about to combust.

I really wanted to rate the book higher, but there's so many point of views and loose threads that are condensed into such a short timeframe, that it's a lot to unpack and doesn't necessarily flow smoothly.

DNF
Let me begin by saying I love the atmosphere of this. The plot/premise is incredibly interesting as well. The witchery with the New Orleans setting will nearly always get me excited. Unfortunately, the characters felt one dimensional almost and very, very immature - even the adults. I know it’s YA and was prepared for it to read as YA, so I expected some level of immaturity. But this was hard for me to read. I made it 46% through before I DNF’d and still feel a bit as if I should finish it eventually, but then I remember how I just didn’t care about what the characters had going on because it made 0 sense. It read similarly to a poorly done CW show.

Cristina and Clement are the grandchildren of the former Queen of the Magical and Spiritual Coalition (MASC) who was lynched after being found guilty of murdering the mayor's daughter. Now, 30 years later, someone is after the twins' mom after they discover that her illness is due to a hex. Cristina is determined to clear her grandmother's name though she has eschewed the use of magic. And Clement wants to find the person who crossed his mom and his family.

Told from the POV of Clement and Cristina, with also some POV from side characters...There were too many perspective, which also changed in tense (from first-person-present-tense with the twins to third-person-past-tense with the side characters). I really wanted to love this book: the cover is gorgeous, the premise is intriguing, and the setting is New Orleans. With more character development and focus, I think the twins could have been awesome MCs with distinct voices and strengths. I was intrigued by the family lore and the differentiation of all the magical types.

Unfortunately, this book fell utterly flat for me. There was no sense of setting (or maybe there were far too many settings that nothing seemed central) and too many characters that did not have a significant focus, but played a significant part to plot development (I found myself highlighting and writing "WHO" because the introduction of the character and any action was so distant). The voices of the characters were not distinct enough, which was also frustrating as many of the adults sounded like angsty teens (Queen Mother/grandmother saying "That part, Gabriela") and the the teens are mouthy as hell. The revelations are only revelations to the twins because readers are told information within the side character narratives. I found myself sighing and saying "of course" whenever something sketchy happens but the MCs are clueless. There was just way too much going on (and somehow, not enough) and this could have easily been split into two separate books. 1.5 stars. It's not that I didn't like it...it has SO MUCH potential and could easily be a cool witchy teen TV series, which is frustrating that the writing itself felt like it needed another once-over for editing, focus/scope, and character development.

Blood Debts is an intense, fast-paced magical mystery. Twins Cristina and Clement, descendents of a long line of practitioners of Generational magic, must come together with the help of their family to find out who is trying to kill them and why. I loved this book so much. One of its main focuses is on family dynamics and the power of family, taking us through the feuds of multiple families of New Orleans practitioners of magic. It also makes sure to emphasize the importance of Black joy, which is not portrayed often enough in books. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a side of atmosphere with their YA fantasy books. This is a must read, and I can’t wait for it to be published on April 4th!

🦇 Blood Debts Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

❝ It's there, as we walk down the center aisle between the opposing crowds with raw energy, that I finally think I might've figured out the meaning of life. The sea of people, entangled in body and thought, two sides of the same coin, screaming for change—this is the epicenter of social disruption. Yet, they're but a small part of a much larger world, comprising a vast collection of people whose lives crash into one another in peace, love, or anger—like me, like everyone around me. ❞

🦇 Sixteen-year-old twins Clement and Cristina Trudeau are heirs to a magical throne once ruled by their grandmother, Cristine Dupart. Her title as Queen of the Generational Magic Council of New Orleans and Chair of the Magical and Spiritual Coalition of the entire magical world was stolen the night Cristine and her husband were brutally massacred in front of their family home. 30 years later, Clement and Cristina discover their ailing mother isn't sick, but rather cursed, leading them to uncover two mysteries: who is after their family now, and who stole their legacy 30 years ago.

💜 Terry J. Benton-Walker's contemporary fantasy debut is a powerful conjuring of magic, social justice, and the force behind family. This spell-binding story draws from New Orlean's history of Voodoo, Southern mystic, and urban fantasy while shining dazzling moonlight on social injustices of our past and present. Benton-Walker does a skillful job of exploring topics like inequality, justice, grief, morality, mental health, and cycles of violence—cycles that extend down bloodlines. Racist mobs, lynchings, and drive-by shootings aren't easy topics to broach, but Benton-Walker does so with respect for the past while pushing for peace and equality in the future. He also breathes life to the New Orleans many of us only visit through page and ink with exquisite detail. When the same home is shared through generations, it becomes more than a place; it becomes part of a family's history, their legacy. Clement's anxiety and Cristina's therapy are beautiful, realistic touches as well, and I'm grateful to Benton-Walker for normalizing the topic of mental health. I also appreciated the concept of history repeating from one generation to the next, though I'm eager to see how the twins break from such unhealthy cycles in future installments.

🦇 To be completely honest, I wanted to give this story five stars, but there's still so much potential for growth in the plot, characters, and prose. For starters, I wish there was more suspense (everyone is keeping secrets, but since the readers know most of them, there's no real tension). The story's murder mystery lacks twists and turns that could otherwise build that suspense, too. Details regarding the different forms of magic were a little vague as well, making it difficult for readers to fully immerse themselves in this world. While the cast is diverse, there are so many characters (past and present) that it's a little difficult to keep track, especially during Cristina's investigation (her bullet point recaps helped). The story's POV switches to other characters more than once, and while their perception of past and present events could have added depth to the story by providing details the twins lacked, it didn't. However, it does remind us that people are interconnected, their stories threaded together in unperceivable ways. Given it's only the first book in a series, I'm eager to see how the details we were given from Zachary Kingston and Valentina Savant weave into the shared tapestry of this tale.

🦇 Recommended to any fan of YA fantasy, magical mayhem, and social justice. Blood Debts is an enchanting, enthralling urban fantasy and murder mystery; a series with potential to become an on-screen legacy.

⚜️ Social Justice
🩸Murder Mystery
💀 Multiple POVs
🌙 Magically Queer Characters

⚠️ Trigger Warnings: Racism, lynching, anxiety, depression, homophobia, bullying, murder, grief, sexual assault, alcohol and drug use, car accident.

🦇 Major thanks to the author and publisher for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

This book had such great potential, with a lot of generational magic and healing going on, but I just think the execution didn't pay off. There were multiple POVs, with some being in first person and some in third, It just felt very clunky, which was added to by the excessive amounts of info-dumping, which I ended up skim-reading a lot of the time. I also struggled to grasp the magic system, which you would think would be the thing that would have an info dump... but no. So I was very confused for much of the book.

I also thought for sure that this was a historical fantasy, which I think would have worked much better. I struggled to connect to the atmosphere, especially with a not well-explained magic system. I think the biggest issue was that despite there being a lot of complex plotlines going on, I was pretty bored for the majority of the book. I couldn't connect to the characters - in fact, I found it difficult to distinguish between the twins' chapters. The prose was very basic as well.

I'm really sad because this book sounded so wonderful, but the execution just isn't there.

Right off the bat, I was completely thrown by the setting. I don’t know if way back when I requested the book, the word “contemporary” hadn’t been added yet or if I completely missed it but it took some adjusting since I was expecting a historical fiction fantasy story.

Overall all, I couldn’t connect with any of the (many) character POVs or the writing style, and the pacing felt completely off for me. I had no desire to keep reading and the book put me in a reading slump.

I recognize that this is a “me” problem and there’s probably a large audience for this book…but I’m not it.

I would like to start by thanking NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger warning in this book include but not limited to: - mental assault -violence -guns
-knives -racism (black vs white and Talk of slavery)

Let it be known I mainly read young adult and mystery thrillers so this is all my own opinion and how reading this book made me feel.

Rating: 3 / 3.5

Due to this fact I'm not sure how to rate this since I guessed/figured out all the plot twist and mysteries super quickly. Now the question is were all the clues super obvious on purpose or did I just catch them all from my history of all the mystery thrillers and young adult books I have read over the years. If they are made to be slightly obvious then that results in me thinking it's made for a younger side of the reading genre and if it's for them one specific intimacy scene should be less detailed and the amount of cuss words should be reduced by about 25% to other word choices.

On to the writing style. I found it smooth reading but did have issues at times understanding what was going on when POV kept switching back and forth from first person to third. It made it extremely hard when it happened with the twins chapters since they are written the same with similar personalities. On the topic of the POV one of them specifically was there to just lead to one event which didn't really require their whole back ground story to do and made me loose grip of the plot for a bit.

The synopsis of this book really brought me in. Family magic (black magic, light magic, shadow magic), New Orleans, a murder that happened thirty years ago unsolved. Everything I love in books. The plot was strong and at times stumbled to add in/ remind the readers the MCs are teens by adding in the usual teen drama but brought it back with history and the way the world was painted. I have to give props to this author for making this magic system so easy to follow without it being generic.

Time for the thing I didn't like. I understand the whole idea of history repeating itself but I was thinking it was history for thirty years ago two (or more) families facing off again like they did before to make things right. I wasn't thinking something that happened to other people would be happening almost the exactly same way to in a sense make two sets of characters duplicates of another. If I couldn't I would have loved for those two to have been able to have their own unique storyline to follow instead of in a sense shadowing the other.

Over all I enjoyed the reading experience. Knowing how the first book read and ended would I read following books (if there will be any)? I'm not really sure. Yes it made me want more but also made me question the path the following books might take. Only two things really could be covered and I don't know if there is enough material for it to make a whole book to keep my attention.

Thank you to Macmillan and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing this ARC.

I really wanted to love this.
LGBTQA representation, mental health /anxiety awareness, strong characters fighting back.
That being said, I thought this was a historical Era setting. The multi POVs confused me, I have had to have the ebook and audio going at the same time.
I did like the different cast for the audiobook but needing to still have the ebook open to understand the pacing and who is who defeats the purpose of audio imo.

The book has potential.

4.5 Stars!

From the Author’s Note: "My hope is that this story will leave you with the following questions: How far are you willing to go for justice? And how far is too far?"

I’ll go right ahead and confess, the cover got to me first, then the blurb then I realised it was written by a POC author and had some POC and LGBTQIA+ reps in this which had me volunteer so fast to read this even though it was YA which I do NOT read. (I had to create a shelf because of this)😂

This book focuses on the Trudeau twins who had grown apart over the course of a year due to a family tragedy. Cristina blamed herself and Clement didn't know why she pulled back which bred anger and resentment.

Cristina was Sharp as a tack but there were some times I just wanted to shake her to get some sense into her. These moments also reminded me of how dramatic teenagers can be and I had to consistently remind myself that this was YA to calm down. lol

Clement was a fave. Yes, he also had his moments that incited hair pulling from me but at the heart of it,He just wanted to get justice. Of course, he fell in love along the way which led to the criminally unfair event he went through because of it (why do bad things happen to good people?) . I hope the resolution to that is arrived at in the next installment.

Moving on to the story proper, I found it to be brilliantly written. It was not perfect and could’ve been tighter in some areas but I ABSOLUTELY enjoyed it. The author managed to weave a tale of justice long deserved, family reconciliation(or at least the beginning of one) and the drama/heartache of youthful love all intertwined with solid urban fantasy world building that unfurled at the perfect pace to balance the story. I simply couldn’t get enough.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions, especially about Jean-Louise, Yves, Zack, Oz, the vamps and their shadow magic, sketchy minor gods, the White witches and Eveline, among others. I could go on and on about the loose ends but looking at how this story ended(which made me scream!), there are certainly more books in the horizon for these twins and all the fascinating people linked to them.

I, for one, will be first in line for these books whenever they are released.

This book has a lot going for it. The characters are deep and nuanced, the magic system is amazing, and the heart of the story is a mystery where the main characters have to unravel the past.

However, this book is YA at it’s heart. This book is marketed as a YA so it’s not a fault of the book. However as someone who still reads YA but likes it a bit on the older side of YA, the writing fell flat for me. However I will be keeping my eyes out for an adult releases this author writes because everything else about this book was great.

DNF
The girl gets “acute to being roofied”, tells her Mom, and her mom’s response is to tell her, oh well that’s life, he is white male with connections so nothing will come of it, so why report it? What! Why would I lead a young person to believe this? You always always always report any sexual crimes of any kind. If a kid has the courage to tell an adult, the adult should have the courage to report it to authorities. I tried to read more past this. But the characters continued to rationalize their crimes and bad choices. If this wasn’t labeled as “YA”, I could embrace these things. In real life girls get date raped, people commit crimes, people have problems. But there was no escape in this book, it was one thing after another. Even the magic element the main characters struggle with it wasn’t liberating or uplifting.

I read “YA” as an adult for the escape, for elements of hope or joy that kids still have in the world. I tired to keep reading to see if it would ever happen, but the love spell situation took me as far as I wanted to go. If, eventually, something does come of it I couldn’t get through all the other hopelessness these teens had to keep struggling through to get there.

Everything about this book had my heart racing.

Blood Debts is a big interconnected story that boils down to family at its center. Two siblings have to grapple with family drama as well as their love lives. Along the way, they discover the secrets of their family's past and the tragic events of this town may be more connected than they think, and there are sinister secrets hidden around every corner.

I immediately fell in love with Clem and his point of view. I think I related to him a lot when it comes to anxiety and feeling like you need to keep your walls up to protect yourself and those around you. I did find myself at first being annoyed at Cris but I grew to love her. I love her strength and the growth that she went through on this mental and emotional journey. However, I do have to say that I did not like Valentina's chapters. I didn't connect to her character at all and I thought they happened too often when they didn't have much information to provide. Another problem I had was the amount of characters that were mentioned but we never really met, and everyone involved with the past incidents. I got confused very easily, but that could be reader error.

All of that considered, I really enjoyed this book and will probably be thinking about it for a while.

I received this arc from NetGalley and Tor Teen in exchange for an honest review.

I honestly don’t care about anyone’s opinions about this book, I eff’n LOVE IT!! I just finished, but I would literally open it up and start reading it all over again. I love everything this book represents, especially the die hard loyalty to a dysfunctional family in order to protect the legacy of who and what you are.

It’s YA..so yes, some of the characters are gonna work your nerves as they come off annoying and childish, but think back to your teen years…you were just as bad if not worse!

Listen! None of that even matters. Go get the book, sit down and read it and enjoy it for what it is!

I am now impatiently waiting for book 2.

The book is about two twins trying to come to terms about their mother dying after their dad died a year before. But they find out she has been cursed, and then they round up the family to put up a shield around their home for protection. And finding out secrets and who targeted their mother is next on the twin's agenda.

Kind of spoiler alert.
1. I don't really like a story where the main character is keeping a secret. They always drag it out and not a lot of people can do it right.
2. Clem is annoying. He has pick me, look at me energy. He wants to know everyone's secrets, but the way he acts just proves he can't handle them.
3. The aunts are an amazing addition. If you didn't have them there bickering but coming together when shit hit the fan. I would have lost all respect for this family.

To conclude, I give this book a 3.5 ⭐️. It was slow in places and I felt like they had a lot of unrealistic freedom for 16 year olds. They way they were moving, you would think they was older. Until they got in trouble and realized how immature they really are.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read from beginning to end. Having access to the audio as well further enhanced my reading experience. A HUGE thank you to Macmillan/Tor Publishing Group for the opportunity to review this release ahead of its release. The ending leaves room for more and I for one am looking forward to following where the story goes next.

When I initially read the blurb I was really excited about this ARC. But when I sat down to read it this week, it didn’t grab my attention. I didn’t connect with Clem or Cristina and I felt like both were whiny and pity, pity poor me. I really wanted to like this book but I couldn’t force myself to finish it.

TW// <spoiler> racism, murder, lynching, gore, anxiety, depression, grief, homophobia, mentions of bullying, mentions of drug overdose, car accidents, death of parents, brief mention of sex trafficking, sexual assault (including the magical equivalent of drugging), mention of underage drug use, underage alcohol use, mention of cheating, brief child abuse scene (father hitting son), brief domestic violence scene (wife slapping husband) </spoiler>

I feel bad for not liking this book. It’s clear that Terry J. Benton-Walker put a lot of time, effort, and love into creating this book. However, I found that Blood Debts just did not work for me.

My biggest issue with this book was how it was both too slow and too fast at the same time. There were tons of intricate plotlines that wove together in complex ways. It made it so that a lot of action was happening and you had to keep track of every little detail. This should’ve made the story really fast paced and to some extent it did, but then the writing style came in and slowed everything down. The writing was dull and it constantly dragged. I kept yawning from how slow and boring the book was. I really needed the fastness and the slowness to come together in a way that would make the pacing enjoyable for me, but it didn’t do that at all.

I hated all of the characters in Blood Debts except for Aurora but her time in the book is so tiny that it couldn’t save the story for me. Most of the chapters are from Cris and Clem’s perspectives. I found both of them to be unlikeable. They constantly fought over petty things and their arguments made me angry. I wish they would’ve just stopped trying to win every fight so that they could work through their issues and become close again. I had an issue with Clem’s romance, too. He talks a lot about not wanting to have sex because he wants to meet the right person, but then he decides to have sex with someone he’s been dating for less than a week. It didn’t make sense at all. There were also some POV chapters from some extremely terrible side characters. It was hard to read those chapters. I hated all of the other characters besides Aurora as well. I kept hoping that some of them would redeem themselves and become more likeable, but unfortunately none of them did.

There were way too many loose ends in this book for my liking. If this had been marketed as a series, I would’ve been okay with it, but as of writing this review, Blood Debts currently appears to be a standalone. I wanted resolutions to Zac, Yves, Auguste, Valentina, and Jacquelyn’s story arcs. The story left with unsatisfying conclusions for these characters and it even went so far as to leave the book on a cliffhanger. I hope this book gets a sequel so that fans of Blood Debts won’t be left without satisfying conclusions to all the different plotlines.

There was a lot that I hated in this book, but there was one positive thing I liked: the treatment of mental health problems. There are characters in this book who use anti-anxiety meds and who go to therapy. While the mentions of therapy and anxiety med usage only take up a small portion of this book, I’m glad that Terry J. Benton-Walker attempted to normalize these topics, especially since the primary audience for his book is teens.

I hope that this book will find an audience that loves it and can appreciate the work that Terry J. Benton-Walker put into writing the story, but I am not part of that audience and I did not enjoy my time reading Blood Debts.

<i> Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an eArc of this book. </i>

On paper, this book is everything I would want to read. A fantasy novel about a Black family set in New Orleans and rooted in the history of the city with a bit of mystery sounds like such a great book and something that would really interest me. When reading it though, it fell flat. I did not realize it was set in modern times when I first got the book and then it was an urban fantasy where magic is known and that is never a facet of a book I enjoy. I personally prefer if is is urban fantasy that the magic be part of a hidden world in some way. Nevertheless, I tried to persevere and really dive into this book but when you fundamentally do not enjoy a trope it is hard to enjoy the book. I think it is well written and well-crafted with intriguing plot points and mystery, but it is simply not the book for me.

I really loved this book. It was thoughtfully constructed and really enmeshed you in the world. It was sometimes difficult to read, but given the subject matter it should be. And yet, it wasn't a copy paste of the real world conflicts that are ongoing. I would absolutely recommend this book to teens and adults. Cris and Clement are deeply intriguing characters and I hope to see them return in a sequel!