*I was given a copy of Saint Death’s Daughter in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Solaris and C.S.E. Cooney*

Synopsis:

Life gets complicated when Death gets involved.

To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life.

To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends. But the goddess has other plans…

Review:

What a struggle. I only read 15% of this book and honestly, it was hard. Straightaway you are told the names for twelve new months, seven days of the week and 10+ gods and are somehow expected to understand what is going on. If I were reading this in a physical format then it probably would have been easier, but it just is not accessible in digital. 

The premise of this sounded right up my street. Basically The Addams Family with actual magic. I was super excited to read this but it just really missed the mark. 

In the 15% (seven chapters) I did read of this nothing really happened. There was talk of a contract that allows this random woman to take over Stones manor, something that isn’t greatly explained and I just did not know what was going on. 

In the very short part of this book I did read there were so many names and characters thrown at you and some of them were, let’s just say, unique. I had no problem with the names Lanie and Nita but when a character is called Abandon Hope. Well, things get very confusing. Genuinely I really liked the name Miscellaneous as it’s super unique and just sounds cool, but I found it so difficult to keep up with who was who as some of the names were just ridiculous.

From the get-go, it seemed like there was deeper lore going on than what had been explained to the reader. It felt like you should already know this world and its characters even though it’s the first time you are introduced to both. 

My main problem with Saint Death’s Daughter was definitely the long chapters. I’m the type of reader that enjoys short chapters as I feel like I’m progressing through the book quicker. Unfortunately, this book was the opposite of that. The chapter that I decided to end my (short) journey with this book on was 30 minutes long which in my opinion is way too long. Maybe if the chapters were shorter I may have given Saint Death’s Daughter more time and potentially enjoyed it. Sadly that wasn’t the case.

Personally, this book was not for me, but that may not be the case for you. Just because I didn’t enjoy it doesn’t mean it’s awful. The writing was genuinely good if not a little juvenile trying to hide behind fancy words. It felt to me that the writing style was aimed more towards an older audience but the way in which it was delivered was not that for me. 

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