reviewing tiktok's favorite books: from blood and ash 

Can’t wait to be a published writer and have Marines drag me all the way back to Cuba. Honestly, I live.

No one has described this book in a way that made me want to read it previously but this video made me feel like I need to board up my windows and defend my bookshelves in case it gets in my house and I fall over and start reading it.

It feels like last decades paranormal romance has turned into fantasy romance except no one ever learned how to world build 🙃

I really enjoyed the repeated emphasis on "because Nancy Drew was made for LITERAL CHILDREN so"

"200 year old magic man" IM CACKLING

I feel like this is a twilight situation where all these tweens and teens will look back later at their "complex and spicy" fave when they're adults and be like "welp" lol

So the silver lining is, "At least I got a video out of this."

THANK YOU! It is unbelievable to me that this book has such high ratings. It was so awful! The relationship portrayed here is so unhealthy and Poppy is so dumb. I was rolling my eyes every other page.

Why do adult romance novels keep being marketed as commercial young adult? It's so messed up. This sounds like one of those "kink" romance novels that should be marketed as a niche for grown ass women who know what they're getting into and have the maturity to read it as an unrealistic fantasy that isn't actually healthy in real life. These books are setting up young people for some very toxic relationships. It's irresponsible to market it this way.

Marines: "Jennifer L. Armontrout named her one brown character 'Tawney' " Me: *👀 at Serpent and Dove where the only brown character is named Coco*

Finally I found an intelligent book review channel that’s not just here to sell and grow in popularity. I appreciate you.

I agree with every point you made here! Everything about this book was so frustrating, but I think the most frustrating thing was this weird...tone? That the book took with Poppy's freedom. Like her WHOLE THING is that she feels like she has no agency in her life, her body, her choices, and she spends like 600+ pages monologuing about it. And then Some Guy comes along, completely takes away all her agency and choices and uses her under false pretenses, and it's treated as fine and/or sexy??? I haven't been that angry at the end of a book in a long time lol

Honeydew. That’s. It. No thoughts. Empty head. Zero vibes. Just *HONEYDEW.* BYEEEEEEEEEE

Your impression of the male character’s laugh SENT me! 😂

Lmao I KNEW SJM's writing would be brought up in this 😂😂😂👏

🤣 I love that this book was so bad it made you giggle. That’s something I can relate.

Books like this one and SJM ones are the reason I stopped trusting the majority opinions. Maybe to a lot of new readers this book is good. But not for someone who has any amount of experience with actual good writing and world-building.

So much applause for you finishing 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

I think it was Cam on Twitter who recently was begging people to just read Romance and like, yeah. Listen I am a bad judge of spice truly but often I feel like people need to just read a Romance novel.

When this book was released I very quickly figured from the plot summary that it was not for me but OH WOW thank you for confirming that! Ooooo I do not like the sound of that relationship dynamic at all. I can often bring myself to accept the age differences inherent in magical being / human relationships in fantasy settings, but the author has to make a point of showing the characters on equal footing in other ways AND NOT HAVE THE HUMAN (often female) CHARACTER BE CUT OFF FROM CONTACT WITH PEOPLE AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD! It’s like the author was like ‘hey you know what would make this age gap romance even better [creepier]? Write the barely-adult MC like a literal child and isolate her from other people and experiences! Swoon!’ -Side note but that’s the reason I’m so particular about Rapunzel inspired stories because oh boy that original story is gross 😬 Also “200 year old magic man” was equally funny every time you said it 😂😂😂

oooooh calling people by names they don't want to be called is also a real life pet peeve of mine! that was one of the things i remember most about the raven boys too, which was just one reason i disliked the main romance

It sounds like questions the editor maybe told her to think about and she just wrote it in?

I love how you're just laughing throughout this video 😂

I noticed some of those things but not all but now after you mention it I can see it. My main issue was "Hawkes" behavior reminded me of my sexual abuser from when I was kid. It just rubbed me the wrong was so I already didn't like him and then my anger really sky rocketed when he takes her virginity while he is still lying about who he is and his intentions with her. It was.....disturbing. anytime I've mentioned these big issues in reading groups Im part of, the Fandom attacks me for not loving Hawke 🙄 apparently its unfathomable to not like him or find him sexy....

why do negative reviews always make me wanna read the book? 😭😭😂

This is one of those books that I KNOW i'm not gonna like but everyone loves it that i'm curious about.

I paused the video because I had to go work and it was at a point that when I came back I really thought you'd gone on a tangent about the Darkling and Alina, but no, people just love old manipulative men idk. Thank you for reading this so that no one else has to, though xD

Also as a person with a name that is easily shortened, I hate being called by a name that’s not yours or you haven’t given people permission to cal you. Only super super close friends can call me Dim, and I hate when people I don’t know we’ll shorten it. 😑😑

I agree with EVERYTHING you said! I think what annoyed me the most is that she literally did not care that he manipulated and lied to her. Like her "anger" lasted 2 seconds and then it was back to "omg I love him bc he is the only one to treat me like this". Tried to read book 2 bc they said it got better but nope, nope it did not.

Marines I am watching and loving this for the third time and your genuine distress of “I DON’T KNOW!” when Poppy is doing her internal question monologue instead of explaining is getting me 😂 Thank you for suffering through this book to bless us with brilliantly reasoned and also hilarious content

I’m sorry you had to slog through this book, but let me tell you, I was highly entertained by the content we got out of it.

I did enjoy this book, but I also agree with everything you said. I did go into it knowing that it was going to be trash, so that was probably the big difference. It allowed me to turn my brain off and not think for a while. I did not enjoy how modern the language was and if those sex scenes were “spicy”, they only used salt.

Nothing like a well-informed, well articulated, thorough drag of a literary work 😆 this was fun to watch. I will absolutely be avoiding this one.

I haven't heard a single person I trust say anything good about this book. So I'm just here to hear more dislike for this book. Also the name "Poppy" annoys me, I don't know why. Lol

Living for all of the exasperated sighs, groans, and laughs. You could make supercut review of this book with just those moments. Loved this video a lot! Wasn't ever going to read this anyway, but I'm now glad to know what it's about.

YES!! ALL of these things bothered me so much with the writing. I DNFd after reading the first couple chapters because the writing was so technically bad. I picked it up again and kept myself sane by counting the ellipses, which are a huge pet peeve of mine and got to 167 ellipses in 157 pages before I DNFd again. I only got through it be reading it via audio.

This is such a shame. The way you described it at the start of the video sounds so interesting but it sounds like it unravels hella quick. Like pg 1. Off topic, but you saying "just shut up and let the scene play out" hit me just right. It's probably the best bit of writing advice I've ever heard. So, thank you for that!

🤣 your enjoyment explaining the density of Poppy and the amateur foreshadowing is cracking me up!

I am binge watching all of your vids and I am LIVING for your analysis. I have a graduate degree in literature which is a far cry from editing but I agree with you 100% on everything, especially your YA reviews. You have earned a sub and my upmost respect. I run when I see books written in first person and those damn dashes 😩. Thank you for saving me from bad YA fiction.

I stopped reading YA after the release of Serpent & Dove, so almost two years now? I didn’t like the direction YA Fantasy novels seemed to take post ACOTAR aka “trashy romance novels pretending to be fantasy novels” no shade towards romance I do read romance sometimes although I only read lgbtq ones. I was curious about this book but from what I’m seeing there’s a huge overlap with fans of SJM and I absolutely cannot stand her books, so I skipped reading it. I think I made a good choice. Will be removing this from my list.

Leigh Bardugo does the same question narrative with Alina in Shadow & Bone, but she asks the SAME questions in all three books lol. Very Twilight-ish. Nauseating…

Excuse me madam, it is unlawful for you to make me laugh out loud so that I’m literally choking on my waffle as I watch 😂😂😂😂😂. Thank you for saving me from this bc I’ve been tempted but no thanks

You have the patience of a saint. My friend wants me to read this for her spicy book club, and I am struggling. I have been taking angry notes on my kindle, and it slows me down so much. But when I tell myself I’m going not take notes, I can only go a handful of pages before I can’t take it any more, and have to make another note about how mad it’s made me. It’s a struggle and a slog, and I will give you all the props for finishing it.

I am living for your rant reviews!

IIRC there's an em dash and an ellipsis on the first two pages and I noped out so fast. Strong Sarah J. Maas fan fiction vibes. I hope you treated yourself to something nice after finishing this.

Your description of this book is so entertaining, I'm here watching it for the second time 😂

Yes, omg all of this! Thank you for articulating what I struggled with.

I actually enjoyed this book and the 2 that come after it but I love your take because you’re not wrong. 😂😂 The her constantly asking questions? In book 2 it actually becomes a running joke in the story. Every time she opens her mouth a side male character calls her out because he knows she’s going to ask another question. Even tho I enjoyed the story I struggled through the first half and the world building was confusing and damn near non existent and you don’t get any answers until the end of the book and in to book 2. Falling off a cliff? She literally almost does that in book 2 and your comment made me cackle. 😂😂 The knowing the plot twist? I don’t think there is a single person on the planet who didn’t figure it out....except for Poppy who continues to remain super dense. 200 year old magic man. I’m dead. 🤣 I’m using that to describe him from now on. In the next 2 books you get more characters of color, but they aren’t main characters save for one who’s a main side character. You should keep reading the series just so we can get more reviews like this. The series is trash, and I love it, but I can recognize its trash. And I love seeing rant reviews that are actually insightful like yours are because you’re not wrong about any of your points.

I could’ve listened to you rant about this for another 20 minutes! I have to confess that I use ellipses quite a bit in texts/social media, but it also bothers me to see them all over the page in books. Those excerpts were painful, but also I love story time 😂

I only picked this up because it won the GR Choice romance award and I was salty about it. The reading experience made me saltier than Lot's wife. So bad. So, so bad.

I miss TikTok. 😭 It's been banned in my country.

Oh boy, idk if the book was spicy but this review definitely was! Honestly, the second I saw this book on Goodreads, I got the ACOMAF vibes instantly. And as someone who has had the misfortune of going through the entire ACOTAR series, I made sure to remain far away from this one. Also it's sooooooo long. But appreciate you taking one for the team. Because honestly, this review was so fun to watch. Reading the book would've probably infuriated me.

i’ve been waiting for you to review this for so long!!!! you articulate criticism so well. i was also criminally curious and regret wasting like 8 hours of my life on it 😂

I guess I'll skip this one. I wanted to read it, but I heard it was like ACOTAR and I wasn't able to finish that... Thanks for the thoughtful review, Marines!!

Lol the end of this video 😂😂 I mean you said the writing was bad and I believed you but now I believe you believe you. 😂

"everyone kept saying this was so spicy, but it's really vanilla" LMAOOOOOO

Phew love this video. I just finished this book and wow- the last 100 pages were absurdly ridiculous. This book was predictable from the start, so none of the “big reveals” really hit in any sort of emotional way. Also why does every series have to be 3-5 books long? I’ve heard this series just decreases in quality even more over the next few books. Someone needs to tell authors they don’t need to write 5 books worth of fluff

I came here from TikTok and I’m so excited to find someone who feels the same about this book where all of the other reviews I read were like “this is the best book I’ve ever read” and I thought “are you for real??”

LOL thank you. i felt very similarly and idk if new adult is for me because of this. i'll keep trying but i think i'm gonna stick to bipoc written content for a while. i usually like it more.

I have seen Salty Marines before but this was nearly Wrathful Marines and I’m here for it.

5:59, Oh my gosh, I just realized somethings else about the Shadow and Bone trilogy when you said this. Alina does a lot of that and it really slows down the story, drags out the word count and makes Alina far more dramatic than she needs to be as a character. I know that’s way off topic, but it made me think of that. And from the premise it sounds like it’s a similar concept to Shadow and Bone.

Loved the review. I've yet to actually like one of these books with that identical flowers+metal thing+black background cover and I think it's safe to say I wouldn't like this one either 😅

I thought the reason why the author's world building in the beginning is so haphazard is because we are seeing it from the Maiden/Poppy's limited views of it. She doesn't fully understand it either and on top of that, she's somewhat resistant to her role in the world she lives in. So I thought that's why it was a bit "this is the way because it is the way" type description was because it was from her narrowed viewpoint/understanding.

i've had the ebook on hold for so long because i just keep pushing it back and pushing it back, so thank you for freeing me from the "but what if it's as good as people say it is?" trap in my brain

thank youuuuu!! After reading I honestly couldn't believe it was all the rage on booktok

Apparently some readers now have a bullying fetish. smh I saw that on a Booktok as a positive thing about some book the person read. A round of applause of taking that bullet.

I admire Marines' restraint and graciousness in her reviews instead of just exploding with rage, which is how she probably feels.

I think comparing Poppy to Nancy Drew is so on point, given the average age of book tiktokers. It's probably their 1st times experiencing epic fantasy/romance books and I love that for them. But it also makes sense that Millenials are less easily pleased. Now though, I cant help myself to see Nancy Drew as the Maiden being all very propper dating Hawk on a roaster with some other guards with perfectly parted hair and going from places to places in the Kingdom with her vintage convertible. 😂 Wait a minute, is this book a fanfic of The Darkling × Alina? A lot of that plot sounds so familiar!

I am having a similar experience with boneless mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke. There's an unbelievable amount of info dump in it too.

“I’m criminally curious” ME

Love this video. I have read the book and was bored most of the book but intrigued enough to continue the series because of the ending. I have a love hate relationship with the book. I also agree with the fact that the book is too long.

Doesn’t tiktok also stan We Were Liars? It feels like early booktube all over again over there.

This is so funny! I wanted to read this because of the popularity, but I'm so glad I haven't read it yet, and now I won't. This doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Great review!

Loves this review. You’re so freaking funny😂

Ooh boy im ready for this, I haven’t read this book but this review reminds me of my own feelings for Bone Crier’s Moon 😂🙃

It was definitely the writing for me as well. I liked a lot about this book, but man, the writing had me questioning a lot and just left me confused. It took me seven months just to finish this book. But the best thing that came out of this book was when and how the Duke died.

my god i can't stop looking at these shelves, they are so pretty

Thank you so much for giving your review I felt the same , but after the second book it gets better in my opinion. I totally agree with you on this book though 🤣🤗 if I were you I would get the audiobook because it really brings the book to life , you might like the books that way.

this made me giggle so much !! u have such an infectious laugh, this review was fantastic

Marines' laugh is so infectious, this video had me laughing while she described how absurd this book sounds. Definitely not interested in picking this up.

Omg thank you so much. I just read this travesty of a book for my bookclub and i was alone in my hatred for it. This review was DEEPLY satisfying to listen to.

The only thing better would have been to actually watch you reading this cause I'm in tears right now😂😂

I got this book from the library after seeing it all over Bookstagram. I got to the end of page 4 or 5 and returned it immediately. I never got far enough to meet Tawny but how in the fuck did she have all the names in the world to choose from and as many as she could make up, but she named her only brown character "light brown" ?

i had the same experience of never being able to get past a few pages when i got the library ebook and having to return & put another hold on lol...guess i don't need to try again haha

Ohhhh I have been meaning to read this. It's in my audible library.

Okay okay okay I'm back and I have now read and really enjoyed this book... And agree with a lot of what you're saying. I'm wondering if listening to the book instead of reading it made it better? I did find myself thinking that the fight scenes dragged a little and maybe it was because of the weird switches between nothing happening and the HUGE FIGHT SCENE!

Hahahaha I'm dying! The best thing about this book is your review tbh 🤣🤣🤣. Thank you! You made it worth the read.

...this is what happens when you feed SJM after midnight.

Wow, I love this review! For anyone thinking of reading this book, I'd urge them to watch this video first because I agree with all the criticisms here. Conversely, I enjoyed this book when I read it last summer. In the moment, I felt like this book was doing something different structurally. I guess I didn't read the early world-building as world-building because those sections fail to answer integral questions about what's going on. I kept wondering, WHY is Poppy kept secluded and venerated? WHO is Hawke? WHAT are the true implications of the Ascension? I was incentivized to keep reading so I could get answers and even when half my questions went unanswered and half were answered in obvious or predictable ways, it didn't fundamentally alter my enjoyment as I read because those world building mysteries aren't definitively solved until the book is almost over. For me, the genre mash-up and sub-genre scarcity also played a part. I'm primarily a romance reader and the sub-genre of ADULT fantasy romance isn't widely available. Aside from Sarah J. Maas's ACOTAR series (and I'd argue only the 1st and 2nd books operate within genre convention), I can count on one hand the number of fantasy romances by traditional publishers in the last 5 years. Then, From Blood and Ash comes along and it's this eclectic mix of epic high fantasy, paranormal creatures, dystopian society, dark romance, and tons of supernatural horror, and it was an exciting change of pace! Anyway, I could 100% see myself giving this 1 star, for all the reasons you've mentioned. I ended up giving it 4. If anything, the sequel is much, much worse (with Q-Anon world-building and a romanticized story of intimate partner murder). That's my 2 cents.

hahaha i felt exactly the same the writing style and the relationship dynamic was almost unbearable! I do get why people like it though it reminded me a lot of twilight and I unironically enjoyed twilight back when it was big. I read the second one because I thought it would be better and it was ever so slightly but not really

This rant was everything.

It’s like we’re not even reading the same books. People who liked this probably also enjoyed that toxic mess Serpent & Dove. Yikes. The narrative question thing was very 50 shades of hell no 😂

I also wasn't into tik tok for a long time🤣 I need to start trying to make content This book is soooo hyped - I'm sorry I spent your money on it😭 I haven't read it... i still might read it just for fun like a guilty pleasure hehe

Have you considered doing a video or vlog on how you do reviews? The back end stuff. For RU-vid, Goodreads, TikTok, and everything else. I'm just in a couple of book clubs and I sometimes struggle to collect my thoughts. Do you take notes? Highlight? Do you have any tricks, since you're basically an expert?

I've recently realized that some popular books may just not be for me because of how "easy" or "juvenile" they may be. And that could very well be why they're popular, people who don't read very often find these books and because they're "easy", they love them and recommend them and build them up. I guess people have to start somewhere and if this gets them reading then so be it.

Your video really came just in time. Tik Tok was 🤏 *this* 🤏 close to convincing me I should buy it.

When I was reading this spice at the end I honestly thought that I skiped some chapter or two by mistake. And then I understood it's seriously just like that I couldn't not laugh at it.

I just checked this book out yesterday from my library and started reading it today. I am two chapters in and I'm already annoyed with the first person point of view and I dislike Hawke. I'm returning it to the library and sticking to the book I was currently reading. Also, I'm glad I stumbled upon your video and saved myself from continuing to read this book.

I would love to be a fly on the wall while you read these books. Your reactions must be hilarious 😂

I haven't read this book but I've read her Wait for You series, and I like to call it a "potato chip" series: It's not very good but you can't seem to stop at just one!