REVIEW! Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

I actually got this book on the 2 for £7 offer in Tesco and had been wanting to read it for a while. I'd seen a lot of people on Instagram raving about it, so obviously I had to see for myself and oh wow I'm so glad I did.
After reading back this post I can confirm it is almost spoiler free (but the kind of spoiler doesn't technically spoil anything!  

My Rating: ★★★★(and a half)

So the blurb for this book (taken from Goodreads) is:

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. 

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now, Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. 

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers—and her growing feelings for the enemy.

I absolutely loved the characters in this and the development of said characters;

• I love how you see Zelie do everything she can to fight for what is right
• I love how Tzain is the typical big brother, he's protective and he can be controlling but he never actively tries to stop Zelie 
• I love how we see the internal struggle Inan is battling throughout this book, his father has always brainwashed him into believing one thing, but then he realises maybe his father was wrong and that isn't the way to go
• I love Amari. Everything about her makes her my favourite character. I love how she seems really weak at the beginning and then throughout the book she becomes this badass who owns her title, she is strong, she is fierce, and I could talk about Amari for days.

It took a few chapters for me to get into this book, not in an unpleasant 'I'm bored with this' way, but in a 'I can't wait for what's coming' sort of way. There were twists and it wasn't predictable for me at all. I buddy read this with some friends and we have a little group chat where we talked about theories while we were reading and my exact quote (and it took a while to scroll through the chat to find this); "I think they might need Inan for the ritual, I could be wrong though". Even though the reason behind thinking that was wrong, Inan actually did play a big part in this bit of the book, and I just love it when my theories are right, even if only slightly right.

I was originally going to rate this 4 stars until I got to the last chapter and I had to bump it up to a 4.5. Oh my, what an ending to a book, all I can say is I need book two to be released ASAP