Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood Review

Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

Synopsis:

Bryce Quinlan is a half Fae, half human living her best party life in Crescent City. That is until a horrific murder pulls her world out from under her.

Two years later, Bryce is content to let everyone believe she’s still that party girl, if only to hide the empty shell she’s become. When the murderer strikes again Bryce becomes entangled in the investigation, working alongside infamous Fallen angel, Hunt Athalar, to unravel the secrets of the past. The threads of this mystery run deeper than they could ever have imagined, rocking the world as they know it and beyond.

Nikki says:

I’ll give her this, Maas knows how to write. Or maybe I just like the way she writes. Either way, if this hadn’t been written quite so well I probably would have binned it. When the book starts we’re immediately bombarded with names, and places, and orders, and history, and it was almost too much for my little brain to cope with. I get it, this is a complex world Maas is building, and maybe it was the jump from YA/NA to adult, but my poor brain struggled. It’s absolutely not essential to remember all that info though, so if you can hang on to that thought and focus on the characters we’re actually introduced to instead the rest will fall into place in time.

In that first handful of chapters Maas also manages to make us connect with, and attach ourselves to Bryce and her friends so thoroughly that when the positively brutal murders occur we feel like our own world has been pulled from beneath our feet. Then there’s Bryce herself. Bryce is a fierce and fearless main character. I loved that she took the way that everyone else saw her, as an airheaded party girl, and totally owned it, so that when it mattered the males were too busy staring at her ass to notice she’d got exactly what she wanted from them. She proves you can be sexy, and sassy and still kick ass.

Was this my favourite Maas book? No. Was it perfect? No. Did I cry my little eyes out? I absolutely did. Will I dive straight into book two the minute it lands on my door mat? Of course. 

Emma says:

Like Nikki says, the beginning of this book was a massive information dump. You need to be ready to pay attention as there’s lots of names and places thrown at you. Despite this, the story is intriguing and unpredictable in some respects. There were a lot of twists and turns that kept me reading until the end.

I wasn’t convinced about some of the characters and relationships though. In fact, I felt like a lot of the time the supporting characters outshine the two main characters. The relationship between Bryce and Hunt was also a bit of an issue for me. After what we’re told Hunt has been through in his past I expected him to be way more traumatised and damaged. I’m talking serious PTSD. Basically a shell. So I’m not really convinced that he’d be this comparitavely easy going, Sunball watching guy.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Genre: Adult Fantasy

Book 1 (incomplete series)