Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

Liis reviews Your Blood, My Bones a standalone novel by Kelly Andrew, a NetGalley ARC.

An eARC was received by the publisher, Gollancz via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Possible fit for The Sound of Madness Reading Challenge 2024 prompts:

Joker prompt that goes with anything: Now We Are Free

A seductively twisted romance about loyalty, fate, the lengths we go to hide the darkest parts of ourselves . . . and the people who love those parts most of all.

Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she’s just inherited — to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement — Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead.

Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family’s property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can’t really live, either. Not while he’s bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths. There’s only one way for him to break free. He needs to end the Westlock line.

He needs to kill Wyatt.

With Wyatt’s parents gone, the spells protecting the property have begun to unravel, and dark, ancient forces gather in the nearby forest. The only way for Wyatt to repair the wards is to work with Peter — the one person who knows how to harness her volatile magic. But how can she trust a boy who’s sworn an oath to destroy her? When the past turns up to haunt them in the most unexpected way, they are forced to rely on one another to survive, or else tear each other apart.

“It made her sick to think about it. All those summers, smelling blood on his skin, and she’d never dug deeper.”

I didn’t expect to be sobbing my eyes out on a Saturday morning as I finished reading this book, but there we go. A slobbering mess. Your Blood, My Bones is that book I wish I had written myself. Yeah, it’s one of those.  It’s an ode to the bittersweet nostalgia. A sort of acceptance and a goodbye to those days gone, to the you that once was, to the possibilities that may have been but never were, not truly. Frankly, I feel like a demon, feeding on tragic love stories. Give me frilly romance and I’ll turn my nose up at it. Wrap that romance, true love, into tragic and twisted circumstances, and I’ll lap it up and I’ll cry while doing it. This book was equal parts horrific, sweet and a salvation.

Your Blood, My Bones is quite the dark paranormal story that has an air of romance and horror. Horror more than romance. Romance through horror. But definitely teetering to the horror side more. Ah, you know what, it’s all so twisted together like Wyatt, Peter and James. I am truly reluctant to give any further detail about this story than the blurb already reveals – it’s best to go into this completely trusting that it will deliver and discover it in its aching inevitability. I mean, anyone who has read this book says they will read everything Kelly Andrew will publish. Yep, me too. 

The writing skill Kelly Andrew possesses is a triumph for what this story needed to be like. Without Andrew’s chosen words, her own unique signature style that effortlessly pulls the story towards gothic, this story could have fallen completely in on itself. Word by word, chapter by chapter, this book teases out strong emotion – I would know, I did the crying. Its alternating POVs give insight from Wyatt and Peter (and one chapter by James) – a push and pull relationship where everyone is hiding secrets from each other.

Wyatt, by the way, is a girl. This is not M/M romance, even if Wyatt’s name may suggest otherwise. Turns out, Wyatt is considered a gender neutral name and in a sense, there is also a reason why Wyatt was named Wyatt. She enjoys the company of the boys immensely as they spend summer after summer in this secluded area, out of town, roaming the wilds. Unfortunately, a lot is kept in secret from her, not only by the boys, but also by her family and that creates a burden on her shoulders. She will find herself wondering what might be wrong with her. Peter is silent, gloomy but kind, detached. James is the cheeky British lad, the one that will lift the mood with well-placed, dry British humour, and he has a secret of his own.

In addition to making the pages bleed with emotion as the story unravels and centuries old secrets will be revealed, Andrew writes insanely good setting… The forests, the evils – ancient and more recent, the visuals of witchy abilities, the curse of immortality, the dark ambition of men thinking they can reap a soul for their own benefit? Whoo… The feeling of nature from this book was overwhelming in the best of ways! Dark, twisted, and yet, delightful. 

Which brings us to the ending… That ending will leave the readers reeling… It tears a hole in your heart and squeezes you empty like a lemon. Truth is, it was the perfect ending. It was. And it’s one of those times you want the story to have a sequel, for it to continue, but at the same time you accept, that all good things come to an end. Because that’s for the best.

I would recommend Your Blood, My Bones to readers of paranormal, romantasy and horror. It delivers on all fronts.