For a long time I thought I was going to DNF this book. I had read about 50 pages, put it on the shelf and just completely lost interest. But I had already marked it as currently reading and wanted to get it off my TBR so I powered through and... I have regrets. Blood & Honey was disappointing. Serpent & Dove certainly wasn't my favorite read of the year, but it was enjoyable enough to get through and made at least a small bit of sense.

The plot is convoluted and confusing and there and the pacing just feels off. The stakes didn't really feel all that high for me to be honest and I will dig into this especially in the spoilers section. Most of all, the relationships between characters were incredibly frustrating and communication was so poor. I can understand poor communication or lying as a plot driver in some instances but not when it starts nearly every conflict between a character. Big payoff moments just fell flat because I felt like there wasn't any build up to earn them or the actual build up didn't match the interaction that was written for the characters afterwards. Everyone just feels like they act out of character 50% of the time and it's unnerving. 

One of the most frustrating things to me was the sense of urgency that was both present and not present throughout. Like the threat was there whenever it was plot convenient but if the characters needed to be in a clearing in the woods with no concerns for their surroundings despite having previously spent three paragraphs describing the lengths they needed to go to conceal themselves while they hid in a different clearing in the woods, then it was no problem, and that just really takes me out of a story. 

The relationship between Lou and Reid is SO TOXIC and that's why I can't give this any higher of a rating even if I wanted to. There is literally a line in the book where Reid inner monologues something along the lines of "I need to fix her", and that's not even mentioning the whole "I killed my father figured to revive you and now you basically continue to lie and slap me in the face with it constantly." I just didn't even want to root for this relationship because it is so unhealthy and they do not communicate at ALL. But hey maybe that's just me...