REVIEW: Blessed by a Demon’s Mark by E.S. Moore

Blessed by a Demon’s Mark by E.S. Moore
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The series went downhill for me in book 2. Book 3, Blessed by a Demon’s Mark, stopped the decline but it didn’t do anything to bring the series back up to being enjoyable for me.

+ on the stupidity of the heroine
In the last book, someone important to Kat died. In the grip of grief, Kat ran away from her friends and life as a vampire slayer to a mysterious, “peaceful” town named Delai, a town that radiated an “it’s a fucking cult” vibe. I get that grief can cause you to make terrible decisions, but for Kat it went beyond terrible to “this is fucking ridiculous, how the hell do you not realize it’s a cult especially when you have past experience dealing with cults.” Hell, a tentative love interest of hers is the leader of one, okay admittedly a not-that-bad kind of cult. Still! Kat ran away to a cult, and she is fucking not aware of it!

In book 3, it took a demon to wake her up to the truth. A fucking demon! You know it’s bad when a demon, a creature who wishes to unleash Hell on Earth, is the host of your intervention. FFS.

+ on the contemptible woe-is-me of the heroine
It was bad enough that Kat was lashing out at everyone, pushing her friends and allies away, making one bad decision after another, and just being a bitch, the mean kind of bitch not the awesome kind. I truly tried being patient with Kat, because along the way I suspected she was being manipulated, in the mess-with-your-head-cause-you-to-self-destruct kind. I was half right and half wrong. I felt for Kat. I honestly did, but she exercised my patience hard.

I could handle Kat making bad decisions, but I found it hard to handle her detestable actions against her friends, people who were only trying to help her, people who if Kat pulled her head out of her ass would realize they had been through what she is going through or even arguably worse. Unlike Kat, a few of those friends of hers had their history carved into their flesh. I did not like Kat’s special snowflake attitude of no-one-understands-my-pain. I did not like how she used others’ pains to lash out.

+ more on the stupidity of the heroine
The biggest issue I had with the book was Kat’s abnormal attachment to this seemingly vulnerable “love me and protect me,” new character Sienna. It was gag-worthy. After finding out the truth about Delai and its leader Levi, did it ever occur to Kat that his daughter Sienna might, I don’t know, share particular attributes of her father, that the innocent, “I’m a victim” thing she had working there might be an act? After reading the ending, it apparently did fucking not, and I felt like waving my arms up in surrender.

I am not saying Sienna is evil, but I am not saying Sienna is not evil either. I am saying Kat is a fucking moron for not acting with highly-called-for caution. Not to mention that Kat has too many enemies to deal with. OMG. Kill the ones who you have now before making new ones, Kat. Fortunately for Kat, Levi is an enemy that can wait because in my opinion he might be the hardest to defeat. Biblical proportion, enough said.

+ gist of book 3
Book 3 was pretty much about Kat dealing with her issues, the internal conflicts, and growing, if ever so little and slowly, as a character. The other conflicts, the external kind, had Kat making a new vampire enemy, possibly two, and putting an old vampire enemy back on her plate... so Kat has at least two vampire masters to contend with, three if worst comes to worst. These vampire masters are stronger than the ones Kat dealt before, and then there’s the demon Kat is beholden to. This right here is what I mean about Kat having a lot on her plate and that she hold off on Levi.

+ what I liked about book 3
There was little I liked in book 3, but thankfully book 3 was not as dreadful a read as book 2. Just slow going and occasionally aggravating. I liked that Kat at least kicked a few ass, even if they were only minions. I liked there was some progress on the romance side regarding the leader of the werewolf cult. Finally, but damn was it so small.

+ a niggling issue
Ethan is Kat’s sidekick/best friend, and I didn’t like how little of a role he played in book 3. I didn’t like how Kat was more worried about Sienna who may or may not be evil than Ethan who is trustworthy. I didn’t like how she treated Ethan in book 3, i.e. she was a bitch, and I hope she’ll make it up to him in the next book.

+ the ending
The ending was not an ending, nor was it a cliffhanger. Nothing was really resolved. The ending was like the ending of a chapter and not that of a book, and this left me displeased.

In Conclusion

I rate Blessed by a Demon’s Mark 2-stars for it was okay. I hope book 4 will bring the series back up.

Goodreads | Amazon