Review: Blood Vow

Blood Vow by J.R. Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not sure I completely knew what the next books in this series were going to be like, but I probably should have expected that we will be watching each member of the trainee group get paired off.

This book revolves around Axe, the tough but wounded warrior who is into kinky things in his spare time. We already had a little peek into his mental state during their original interview process, but here we get to hear all about his past. Because of his mother’s betrayal, he obviously has a hard time trusting women. That doesn’t really stop him from falling head-over-heels for Elise when he first sees her. Elise is part of an aristocratic family and is obviously not expected to date anyone like Axe. She is all about pushing her independence, though, especially in the wake of her cousin’s murder. Her degree is almost finished, and she wants to do more with her life than attend parties and plan social functions.

Elise’s father is about a second away from petitioning her seclusion after he finds her sneaking in and out of the house, but they compromise with a bodyguard… who is of course Axe. These two move super quickly! I was a little startled by how quickly their relationship progresses, especially since they really don’t know a lot about one another. This, obviously, leads to a lot of miscommunication and hurt feelings. There’s also a healthy dose of “jumping to conclusions” that seems prevalent in the series. Sure, we end up with a neat and tidy HEA, but what I found myself really interested in was where we go next. We’re going to move on to our favorite “pretty boy” and the toughest trainee, right? I can’t wait to see how that goes!

Gah! I almost forgot about the Rhage storyline! See? Here’s where the books get a little muddled. The side story (or main story? I never know) is around Rhage’s adoptive daughter and their search for her family. There is a lot of pain thrown in here that was sometimes hard to get through. While we get a nice little Christmas for everyone, it was very difficult for them to end up there. I hope we’re done with that drama for a while.


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