Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew is a paranormal YA novel full of sinister things that will drag the reader into dark places. Protagonist Wyatt Westlock has always been kept away from the darkest parts of the legacy she inherited as one of the Westlock guardians of Willow Heath. Growing up on her family’s forest surrounded land, she is content to run wild with James and Peter, her childhood friends. She doesn’t question the dark rituals her father and his guildsman conduct in the dead of night, or why one of her best friends never seems to belong. After a tragic night, Wyatt’s mother packs her away and they leave Willow Heath behind, Wyatt only returning five years later at the news of her father’s death. Her plans to burn her childhood home to the ground end when she discovers Peter strung up in the basement.
Although it’s immediately obvious that both Peter and Wyatt have reasons to hate each other, that hate can’t eclipse the weight of the memories they share. As Wyatt tries to unearth the secrets that kept Peter literally bound to Willow Heath, she also tries to reconcile those new revelations with the boy she knew growing up. Conflicted between the love and trust she felt towards her childhood friend and the betrayal she feels now, she can’t help but both attempt to pull Peter towards her and push him away. Peter is intimately familiar with these feelings as he has always known that to free himself from the curse that makes him immortal and keeps him bound to Willow Heath, he must offer up Wyatt as a sacrifice instead.
The novel is a battle between the inner darkness that lives within both Wyatt and Peter and the outer darkness that creeps ever closer to the house day by day. As Wyatt continues to fail in her role as guardian, the wards on the estate start to slip, letting in all manners of creatures from a world beyond. Creatures that make it impossible to know who to trust and who to kill. As the days inch closer to the blood moon, neither can deny that to close the rift between the worlds, someone will have to die.
This book is an exploration of the meaning of home and what makes life worth living. It also challenges the reader to consider the price of sacrifices and how much is alright to take or ask from another person. Although there are romantic undertones in the book, the reader shouldn’t go in expecting that love will offer a solution with which everyone can be happy. Instead this book seems to impart the meaning that love is messy and violent and that sometimes love sets into motion events that no one can foresee.
- Posted by Liliana