The Blood Trials had an incredibly exciting premise that hooked me from the start. Unfortunately, the execution kept it from achieving its promise.

From the start, I struggled with how immature Ikenna was. I will own that I don't relate to hot-tempered characters well, and that was a barrier to understanding Ikenna's character for me. However, for a character that is supposed to be quite smart given her grandfather's training, I found it frustrating how often she let her temper completely blind her. At no point did she truly seem mature enough to be handling 90% of the situations she was in.

There wasn't enough space given to certain emotional beats, which undercut any sense of character growth, and I found it especially unbelievable how quickly she shifts from "grief-stricken and self-destructing" to "mission-oriented" at the beginning of the book.

I can't decide if this book wants to be adult or young adult - a confusion the tags on Goodreads share. The content is decidedly adult at times (the violence, the open-door sex scene, etc) yet the writing style is very young adult (readers are really beat over the head with how misogynistic and racist this society is, the FMC acts much younger than she should given the stakes, etc). I felt like the writing couldn't deliver on the promises of the plot and, as a result, really held the book back.

As an example of not exploring certain beats enough, she has sex presumably while under the influence of her blood magic (and it seems to be implied that the MMC also loses control here), yet this is borderline non-consensual moment is never explored beyond her best friend ribbing her about it. It definitely felt like there was a *lot* crammed into this first book and that some plot points could have been cut in order to focus on the biggest, most meaningful moments more.