Review: Belladonna by Adalyn Grace

Name: Belladonna
Series: Belladonna #1
Author: Adalyn Grace
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Format: Kindle
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Gothic, Mystery
Noted Tropes: Red Herring
Steam or Spice: Steam

Rating:

Synopsis: Goodreads
Death waits for no one . . . except for her.

Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her wellbeing – and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy.

Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family’s waning reputation and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger, and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer.

Signa’s best chance of uncovering the murderer, though, is an alliance with Death himself, a fascinating, dangerous shadow who has never been far from her side. Though he’s made her life a living hell, Death shows Signa that their growing connection may be more powerful – and more irresistible – than she ever dared imagine.

Review:

So I didn’t know, going into Belladonna, that this was going to be a mystery. I thought this was a romance between someone who causes death and Death themselves… And whilst it kind of was (and kind of wasn’t simultaneously…) the mystery element ended up being my favourite part! Sometimes it does pay off to go into a book (semi – in this case) blind!

Signa is the name of our FMC and again who I thought she was going to be vs what we got were very different but I absolutely cannot complain about her. Signa, for some reason, can’t die. When everyone around her was dying and Death was there, he was unable to take her. He instead saw a flash of her future. After that, Signa had various runins with Death, and came to the realisation that she simply can’t die. However she hates Death with a burning passion as she blames him directly for killing everyone around her as she grows up. And so we start the book with her eating Belladonna to bring her to the brink of death for long enough to see Death again…

I expected Death helping Signa coming to terms with her ability to kill with her touch and them falling in love. I was excited for it. What I got was Signa, while on the brink of death, learning that a ‘disease’ that killed someone may not have been as uncurable as everyone thought… in fact it may have been murder. She then finds herself racing to figuring how it happened, how to cure it and who did it because it’s happening again.

When I say I had such a good time reading Belladonna, I’m not joking. I loved Signa. I loved Sylas too – though I wasn’t always confident in his character. And Death! Death was brilliant. Additionally, due to the mystery ‘who did it?’ element, you end up paying a lot of attention to the secondary characters… That didn’t help me figure out who was the bad guy, but it did mean that I ended up liking the secondary cast…

I did feel as though the romance needed to be developed a bit more as it kind of felt like it came out of no where. Whilst I do love Signa and Death, and love them together, I just hope that in book 2 it’s developed so it feels less ‘insta-lovey’ (even though she hated him at the start… hard to explain!).

I don’t know what book 2 is about exactly, but following the cliffhanger of book 1 I think it’s safe to assume that there will be an overlap in some of the secondary cast of characters in Belladonna! But I also imagine that we’ll be introduced to some new characters to go along with the new mystery.

Belladonna is a good time, fun, easy read. The mystery is well crafted (I thought on at least 2 occassions I’d figured out the culprit) and Adalyn’s cast of characters are memorable! Not to mention the spooky atmosphere created due to the nature of the topics and Thorn Grove itself… I really enjoyed it and cannot wait to get into Foxglove.

“To me, you are a song to a soul that has never known music. Light to someone who has only seen the darkness[…]I want to be better because of you. Better for you.”

Reading With Tyler