Blood for Blood

Book Title: Blood for Blood

Author: Ryan Graudin

Series: Wolf by Wolf #2

Date Started: August 22nd 2019

Date Completed: August 22nd 2019

Genres: Historical, Thriller, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

What would've happened if the Nazis had won WWII? What would've happened if the resistance sent a little Jewish girl, forced into the powers of shapeshifting, to kill Hitler? And what if she failed? The Wolf by Wolf concept is still a really good idea, three years after I read the first book. Blood for Blood didn't take long to remind me of that, and I read the whole thing in a day - so I clearly enjoyed it. But it has faded in my memory very quickly after finishing it and I come back to the same conclusion I had about book one: it's just missing something.

Blood for Blood is quite a bit darker than I remember the first book being. Wolf by Wolf was essentially a road trip story, with Yael taking part in the Axis Tour (motorcycle race) under the guise of Adele Wolfe. Of course, it touched on a lot of the horrors of the Nazis but it was mostly in the peripheral vision of the competition and its dramas. This time, with Yael on the run and rekindling her rebel mission, we dive headfirst into it in a lot of cases. The history is great, it feels well-researched and respected (if a little dramatised), but it's not going to shy away from the shadows and the smoke.

The plotline of this book didn't go in the direction I expected; not so much in massive twists, but just in the natural stream of events flowing a different way. It was nice to feel like I was along for the ride rather than just reading the book but, as I said, there was just something missing. Was it the depth of character relationships (I got them, but I didn't feel them)? Was it tiring to have things so high-tension all the time? Was it something else entirely? I really don't know, because there's nothing straight out wrong about this book - I read all 496 pages IN A DAY - but I wanted more.

The series has an interesting bunch of characters, very varied. My first instinct was to want to spend more time with them to just see what happened; they're the kind of people that you put in a room together and they will undoubtedly form rivalries and friendships (but also kudos for keeping to a self-contained story because that is hard). What worked nicely in Blood for Blood is that you finally get to see these characters be themselves for the first time, free of the disguises of their mission or self-defensive pride. Yael gets to be Yael (which is significant in so many ways), but you get to see Felix with his actual sister, you get to see the Luka underneath the pretty boy champion. Some aspects of reclaiming their identities felt rushed (Felix was hollow and Adele was a bit too stuck up), and, in general, there were character reactions missed for the sake of the plot. Maybe things would've dragged on if we got to let the people play out their own personalities, but I think I would've liked reading it.

I enjoyed Blood for Blood while reading, and it definitely satisfying concluded the duology, but like its predecessor it just didn't hit that one thing (that still eludes me) that could've taken my breath away.