The Blood Trials

This reads very much YA in terms of the interactions between the characters. Ikenna is 19 and everyone else is about the same age. With that said there is a lot of violence and the political intrigue is very adult. I by no means think a cover or the gender of an author dictates the genre. I mean have y'all read The Poppy Wars or any of NK Jemisin???

Pros:
* Action: I love it! This is action packed. It is constantly happening and I'm OK with it.
* The magic system is interesting.
* The political intrigue is interesting.
* Cover: Beautiful. Gorgeous. Amazing. Ethereal.

Cons:
Magic system and the politics of it all needs to be fleshed out. We really don't get too much information about the magic system. I kept waiting to learn more about the goddess and hope that we learn more in the next installment. We were introduced to some of the politics towards the end of the book but don't really have details that would help us understand some of the moves that occurred towards the end of the book.
Ikenna worked my last nerve A LOT throughout the book. (I'll keep an open mind). My comments about it reading very much YA is more about the fact that I don't have much patience for YA these days and I had to push through some of the interactions because they were so childish at times. The amount of maturity needed to carry out these missions is something that is lacking from the majority of the characters.

Overall, I had a great time reading the book but really hope we get more world building just to understand the world outside of Ikenna's inner circle/bubble.