Blood & Salt

I received an advance copy of this book through Penguin's First To Read program in exchange for an honest review.

Blood & Salt is the first in a planned duology by Kim Liggett and I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it. I liked it, but I didn't always fully understand what was going on - I think this might be one of those stories that makes a better movie than book? It was dark and creepy, but not quite horror. There was a love story, but this wasn't really a romance. I've seen it referred to as "romantic horror" but that doesn't really fit, in my opinion. I'd call it YA twisted magic realism, maybe.

The book tells the story of Ash Larkin, her twin brother Rhys, and their connection to a very creepy cult in Kansas known as Quivira. There's a lot of world-building going on in this book. And it's a very cool world, full of murderous corn and immortality-hungry villains. There's insta-love, but it's magical in origin, so you can kind of forgive it. There are great secondary characters (note to author: more Beth in book 2 please!). I'm almost disappointed that it's only going to be a duology. In my humble opinion, there's enough going on here for at least three books. And maybe a prequel that gives a fuller history of Quivira and the whole Katia/Coronado backstory. As it is, most of the cult's backstory is told via dream flashbacks and I was never quite sure if those dream sequences were meant to be reliable or a bit twisted up and, well, dreamy.

Liggett has a talent for depicting settings and characters and I look forward to seeing her progress as a writer. I am looking forward to reading the second and final installment in this series when it comes out next year.

Also... I'm never going to be able to look at a field of corn the same way again.