Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George

This book has been on my to read list for ages – probably since I started my book blog back in 2015.  The thing is, I never got around to reading it because I’ve seen so many negative reviews about it, so I kind of just kept pushing it to the back and forgetting about it.  When I saw that it was going to be a book of the month from Bloomsbury in their YA newsletter, I finally decided that I was going to read Silver in the Blood.  I was excited.  I sat down on the couch under a blanket (because I felt it necessary to crank the air conditioning), and started to read.

I expected the first part of the book to be slow.  I mean, a lot of historical/paranormal/fantasy books kind of start of slow, with plenty of information for the reader to absorb before moving on.  The pace can be slow too, and oftentimes that leads to a build up in the second half in the book, so I wasn’t even complaining there.  As long as the characters have depth and the plot is interesting, I can deal with slow pacing and information dumps.

But as I kept reading, I honestly kept falling asleep – I would put the book down and come back to it later, and then keep doing the same thing for a few days.  Eventually, at about 70%, I realized that there was absolutely no way that I could finish this – the book had already taken me two weeks to get this far, and I just had no drive to keep reading.  I didn’t even want to read any other books at that point because I was afraid they would be just like this.  So I gave up.

Now, if you follow my reviews on Goodreads or here on my blog, you’ll notice that I rarely post reviews for books I don’t finish.  In fact, I rarely DNF books, because I hate investing time into a story and then walking away without seeing how it ends.  But this is one of t hose rare times where there was just no way I could keep going with this.  I mean, like I said earlier, I could more or less just keep going with a book even if it has slow pacing or the plot is kind of meh, as long as the characters were full of life and entertaining, but Silver in the Blood just failed on all of those levels and I found myself wishing there was just something worth grabbing onto so I could finish.  But sadly, every time I tried, I just found myself yawning skimming ahead just to avoid being bored.

I wanted to love Dacia and LouLou, because they just seemed to be strong and independent characters in the 1890’s, which is one of my favorite time periods.  As much as I tried to love these independent and witty heroines who weren’t afraid to stand up for themselves, their personalities just seemed forced to me, and I didn’t witness any character growth or anything to prove that they would get better in time.  I really didn’t feel connected to either of them, and more than anything else, I simply didn’t care about their dilemmas or what was going on in each of their lives.

The plot was just a bit too boring and slow paced for my tastes, and for the entire 70 percent of the book that I actually read, not much actually happened.  I expected a lot more mystery and paranormal aspects than were actually present, and the fact that a kind of love story was being weaved throughout the pages didn’t really help the book out at all.

While Silver in the Blood got some reviews that also called it boring, I was excited to dive into this without thinking of those reviews (plus, that cover is gorgeous – both the hardcover and the paperback editions), but I just couldn’t.  For once, I found myself agreeing with a lot of other reviewers, and I didn’t hesitate to put this one down.  Maybe someday in the future I’ll feel adventurous enough to go back and finish it, but for now, I think it’s time to move on.

Have you read Silver in the Blood or any other books by this author?  What did you think about them?