Name: Blood & Betrayals
Series: Avalon University #1
Authors: Jeanette Rose and Alexis Rune
Publisher: Rose and Star Publishing
Format: Kindle (through Kindle Unlimited)
Genres: Adult, Dark Academia, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal
Spice Rating: Explicit & Plentiful 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Rating: (Rating has been amended to 5 stars!)
Synopsis: Goodreads
Fear, Fury and Fire.
To Know is Not Enough.
Power flows through the ancient halls of Avalon University like a neverending flood. Admission to the elite institution enables students to hone their magic under the watchful eye of their icy headmaster.
Summer Tuatha De Daanan planned to slide through her tenure at Avalon, unnoticed and inconspicuous. She has no interest in learning more about her past or why someone applied to the school on her behalf. Her emotional walls keep everyone at bay, and her sharp tongue makes people give her a wide berth. Yet, despite her best attempts, her emotional armor begins to melt from her feral vampire roommate to the angelic senior who is never dissuaded by her feigning disinterest. Maybe this could be good for her, a new life. Yet, dark secrets lurk in the halls of Avalon, and soon those same halls are drenched in blood.
Summer finds herself as the obsession of the sadistic stalker with the Seven lessons to learn. With the help of her new friends, she races against the clock to solve the mystery, hoping to save lives and catch the killer before it’s too late.
Review:
I hope I’ve learnt my lesson! If I try to read too many chunky books at once, they each take longer to get into, longer to finish, than if I am reading one chunky book and a mid / small book! Because Blood & Betrayals was excellent but it took me forever to finish because I started it when I was reading Fairydale! Sheesh… I need to be kinder to myself when I’m picking my books to read!!
I loved Blood & Betrayals, I didn’t love that there was just so much sex but I kind of got it given the whole university life plus a bunch of supernatural beings who were very much into each other. I get it. But I could have done without it being so constant a topic on the page. Let it just be something they do off the page a lot!
Regardless, let’s talk about these characters and this story because like I said, I loved it. Blood & Betrayals follows Summer, a fae abandoned early in her life and brought up by mortals, as she goes to a supernatural school. The twist? She didn’t sign up to go. Someone else did so for her. And when she gets there weird things start happening. She makes friends – weird. She gets a boyfriend – weird. Oh, and a bunch of girls start getting brutally murdered. Weird.
First I have to focus on Summer and Connor – because I loved them (sex aside) as Connor was truly excellent for Summer. Helping her to come out of the shell she’d formed for herself and opening her up. Their banter was excellent, and their cute moments had me giggling and kicking my feet (Pre-Girlfriend!!! IYKYK). And let’s not add in Connor’s family – more specifically his parents! If nothing else, these authors crafted a wonderful family and I’d read about all of them quite happily!
Aside from Summer and Connor, we also had a couple of other characters the featured quite heavily. Alice – Summer’s roommate and vampire, Headmaster Emrys – the Headmaster of the University with either a dark side or a dark history, and Stranger – a still unknown character, referred to only as Stranger (or 1051). Each of these characters felt unique and added to the story – and I grew very attached to Stranger, this character frutrated me to no end though! I do love complicated and flawed characters.
I enjoyed the mystery throughout this book (who is killing these girls, who is Stranger…) and found myself developing theories and then new theories only then to return to an original theory more confident than ever. Yes, I had fun with this book. It was intense in parts, some parts were just their university life, some was focussed on showing us more and more about Summer and those around us… there was also the occassional chapter where the POV changed…
I don’t think Blood & Betrayal’s is for everyone, but I do think if you enjoy a dark academia, a who done it mystery, multiple supernatural creatures and found families (and you can get past the sex), then you stand a good chance of enjoying this. The comparison to Zodiac Academy also gives me reason to think I should perhaps give that series another chance. I can’t wait for book 2, I’m so excited!
“I saw this girl at this party, and all I could think was Her. She is the reason I didn’t date before.”
Reading With Tyler 
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