The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton

Synopsis:  For Mab Prowd, the practice of blood magic is as natural as breathing. It's all she's ever known. Growing up on an isolated farm in Kansas with other practitioners may have kept her from making friends her own age, but it has also given her a sense of purpose—she's connected to the land and protective of the magic. And she is able to practice it proudly and happily out in the open with only the crows as her companions. Mab will do anything to keep the ancient practice alive and guard its secrets.

But one morning while she is working out a particularly tricky spell she encounters Will, a local boy who is trying to exorcise some mundane personal demons. He experiences Mab's magic in a way his mind cannot comprehend and is all too happy to end their chance meeting. But secrets that were kept from Mab by the earlier generations of blood magicians have come home to roost. And she and Will are drawn back together, time again by this dangerous force looking to break free from the earth and reclaim its own dark power.

 

Review: The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton was a surprise for me.  For me the book started out slow, yes as the name states it had a bloody start but was slow. Now that being said this is the second book in the series, most series do start out like this to develop characters, and throughout the book Tessa does this well. The book is told from three points of view, I love different points of view in a novel because it gives the reader a more in depth look into the characters’ lives, and the author pulls it off flawlessly. This is also one of those stories that go between past and present.

 

We have Mab Prowd who is the new Deacon (leader) of the blood witches. The coven’s previous deacon has passed away, which understandably has caused a few problems. It seems to me that Mab was meant for this, you know the whole “Everything happens for a reason” thing. Having never read the first book I am unsure as to what happened, but events led Mab to being raised by her grandmother and the coven’s now dead deacon Arthur.

Anyway Mab’s goal (at the request of Arthur before he died) was to destroy something, ( can’t tell you what, you need to read the book to find out) she tries, fails and this failure ends up causing a lot of chaos. As you can guess the book only gets better from there.

This book is not my cup of tea, but I give credit where credit is due. The book is very well written, and the magic and mystery woven into the pages is undeniable. I highly recommend this book to you, whether you are fourteen or forty. This is a book I would read with my daughter, it is age appropriate, but it doesn’t make it boring, its full of excitement, and during the journey of reading you find yourself blinking at the pages and wondering what could possibly come next.

As I said this is a novel for every age, I recommend picking it up for that special teenage girl in your life that loves to read, and when she is done with it…. Ask to borrow it.

Reviewed by: CHRISTINA