#actually so fucking magical. the crowd my friends HIM!!! AGH!!!

[megahykler]

chasing the high i got from the stockholm gig 👹

[toomuchtimenerd]

Review for ‘When Wishes Bleed’ by Casey L. Bond

Hey it’s me and I’m already back on my YA fantasy binge! At this rate I’m going to run out of YA fantasy to read (not really considering how flooded this genre is) if I don’t run out of money to buy these books first. I quite love having hard copies of books, but good grief they’re usually always more expensive than the ebook copy and I can’t quite get over the environmental impact of hard copies. Thus, I can’t justify shelling out more money and contributing to environmental issues just for the sake of having a pretty cover on my bookshelf. But honestly, had When Wishes Bleed been a 5/5 book I would have been so tempted to get a hard copy of this book and admire its cover from afar. Sadly, this was definitely not a 5/5 book and it pains me so much because I really only had a major issue with ONE aspect of the book. I thought everything else was decently done, but the book came with a single fault that I could not and will not ever be able to handle. 

When Wishes Bleed is told from the POV of a witch named Sable, who is dubbed the Daughter of Fate. Fate appears to be some kind of... entity that cannot physically materialize and must inhabit a witch and have said witch perform his bidding. Fate inhabits Sable in this case, and essentially compels Sable carry out his duties such as sentencing people to death. Fate also grants Sable the power to vaguely read someone’s future, which is more or less how this story begins. Sable reads the future of the crown prince of her kingdom, Tauren, and discovers that someone will soon be after his life. In response, Tauren invites her to the palace to find out who is trying to kill him, while Sable is under the guise of being part of the competition to be Tauren’s wife and future queen. Very much bachelor-esque and The Selection, yes? 

Sable is pretty awesome. She’s got super badass powers, even without the ones granted to her by Fate. She is, surprisingly, still a good-hearted person deep down despite being pretty much shunned by her entire witch community because of the immense power that Fate grants her (and later we find out it’s also because Sable’s mother was power hungry and very willing to shed blood for it). She’s incredibly committed to her community, and also to Tauren. On top of all that, you’ve gotta admit she’s got some humor in her bones - the tea party scene with Rose? Yeah that made me snicker a bit. 

Now for our male lead, Prince Tauren... sigh this is where it goes all wrong. Tauren himself is fine as a character, not particularly remarkable or even all that charming. But my issue with him and his relationship with Sable is the icky insta-love that happens between them. This is precisely my issue with this book, and this book could’ve easily been at least a 4/5 book for me had the romance been much more carefully crafted and developed. These two literally fall head over heels for each other at first sight. Sable is looking through a crowd of people for the man she’d supposed to hang in retribution for his crime against her people, and then she sees Tauren in the crowd and his golden eyes are all it takes for her to swoon and temporarily forget what she was doing. After Sable reads his future, Tauren invites her to his “Selection” and pretty much admits that he’s in love with her as soon as she arrives at the palace. Like, come ON! That’s not how love works!!! How does ANYONE suddenly fall fast in love with someone who just told you that you would be murdered soon?! I sure as heck wouldn’t. The romance itself was cute and fluffy between the two, but 0/10 romantic development, sheesh.

To top it off, there was definitely a love triangle, super yuck. And unfortunately, like most books in the YA fantasy genre, it was not well written. Brecan is basically a childhood best friend to Sable, and had actually asked for Sable to be hand-fasted to him (their community’s form of marriage, more or less) before Tauren invited Sable to the palace. Sable obviously declines, and Brecan ends up going with her to the palace as one of her escorts. Brecan is incredibly annoying and kind of douchebaggy the entire time, which is understandable since he’s literally watching the love of his life fall in insta-love with another man. But to be fair, I really admired Brecan’s steadfast devotion to Sable despite the romance situation and I was really glad the author didn’t make him petty during serious situations. Cause honestly, that’s the WORST thing about love triangles: when things get serious and someone goes and fucks shit up for everyone just because they’re mad about their love being unrequited. At least Brecan kept himself together when it really mattered. It was definitely touching to see how much Sable mattered to Brecan, though. Brecan admitted to being heavily attuned to Sable’s magic, and he would always show up with concern every time Sable performed powerful magic. 

The build up towards the climax (with Sable’s mother) was pretty insane. The climax itself was really fast-paced, and I personally would have liked it to be more drawn out since I felt like the ‘final battle’ aspect of the climax was resolved a little too quickly. I really appreciated that the author took the time to draw out the ending, after the resolution of the climax. Most YA authors just kind of end the book maybe a chapter after things get resolved, and sometimes it works for me and other times it really doesn’t. It’s like there’s all this build-up to a climax, then the climax occurs, and then there’s finally a resolution and every one’s able to calm down, and then bam the end. With When Wishes Bleed, the author at least took the time to illustrate how the witch community came back together after suffering a traumatic event, and the author portrayed Sable’s personal resolution with her feelings towards Tauren. So while the romantic development sucked pretty bad, at least their ending together was much more well-written and believable. Not to mention that epilogue? Oh wow. 

All in all, not a bad book. Could have been great, but as it is it’s alright. The world building was decent at best, and I liked the writing style enough. I think my final rating may be around 3/5, because honestly I liked almost everything about this book except for the insta-love and love triangle. Yeah, that totally killed it for me. The story/plot itself was enough to keep me from DNF’ing although the climax wasn’t as fleshed out as it could have been, but agh. That insta-love. Why??