I was obsessed with this book, I couldn’t put it down at all ! I thought the friendship between the characters was wonderful, the romance was slow burn and I adore that, it’s my favourite, but then you add rivals to lovers and I didn’t like it, I was addicted, absolutely brilliant! Your Blood, My Bones has everything you’ll want, curses, creepiness, romance, friendship, magic, and so much emotion, trust me bring tissues !

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Kelly Andrew is one of my favorite modern fantasy writers. This story had everything: relationships, family curses, angst, cults, and more. The book was filled with such stunningly described visuals, I felt deeply immersed in the world. I can't wait to read more by her!

Heading back to the farmhouse where she spent her summers, Wyatt is planning to burn the place and her memories of her father’s neglect to the ground with it. She is not expecting to find, Peter, one of her childhood friends, locked up in the basement. Her desire to leave the past behind in one large, fiery gesture is put on hold as she learns there was a lot more happening every summer while she, Peter and their friend James hung out. The place has a history, her family has a legacy, and it’s now hers, and it’s a bloody one that Wyatt can’t avoid.

Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew grew on me as I read it. It’s set in the same world as The Whispering Dark, but it is a lot darker in tone and content, and I wasn’t expecting it. That isn’t to say it’s a bad thing, far from it, it just took me a minute to get my footing when I first started reading it. Andrew has such a unique way with words, and her descriptions are out of this world. Every time I read something by her, it’s a complete experience in itself.

In Your Blood, My Bones she has spun a wonderfully dark story filled with cryptids, plant magic and friendship tinged with trauma and grief. It took me a ridiculously long time to recognise that a certain name being dropped was THAT person from The Whispering Dark until it was right in my face. I loved the way that Andrew linked the two books, and that her next book is also set in the same world.

This is one of those books that you need to experience rather than read about. If you enjoy gothic horror, unique world-building, dark magic and found family friendships then this is for you!

Kelly Andrew’s debut, ‘The Whispering Dark’, was the first episode of season four of our podcast, ‘The Dark Academicals’, and was one of my favourite books of 2023. It was delicious dark and addictive, with a romance that felt like an elevated version of the ones that captured me in the heights of paranormal romance YA and I couldn’t get enough of it.

As soon as I heard that ‘Your Blood, My Bones’ would be coming out this Spring, I knew I needed it - I didn’t even check the synopsis. But when I finally did, I was even more sold.


Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she's just inherited -- to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement -- Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead.

Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family's property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can't really live, either. Not while he's bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths. There's only one way for him to break free. He needs to end the Westlock line.

He needs to kill Wyatt.

With Wyatt's parents gone, the spells protecting the property have begun to unravel, and dark, ancient forces gather in the nearby forest. The only way for Wyatt to repair the wards is to work with Peter -- the one person who knows how to harness her volatile magic. But how can she trust a boy who's sworn an oath to destroy her? When the past turns up to haunt them in the most unexpected way, they are forced to rely on one another to survive, or else tear each other apart.

With the promise of potential Eldritch-style horror, a slightly darker and aged up story than ‘The Whispering Dark’, and dark, ritualistic magic, I could not be more excited.


‘Your Blood, My Bones’s is very dark and twisty with a really mysterious start. It took me a little while to settle into the story and figure out the dynamics of Wyatt, her family and her connection to Peter/Pedyr, but once I was in, I was in. The tension and the atmosphere was something that I specifically loved in Kelly Andrew’s debut, but she took it up several notches here and I felt everything: the tension, the fear, the betrayal, the grief, the loss. Everything that the characters felt was only heightened by the threat of the surrounding forests and Wyatt’s property and the boundary wards started to flicker and Wyatt couldn’t get a grip on who and what to trust.


This is pitched as slow burn, and it’s the slowest burn - which isn’t a criticism in the slightest. It really adds to the conflict and tension as Wyatt and Peter navigate their past and the secrets being unveiled in their present, as well as their feelings for each other in an impossible situation. Slow burn done well is far superior to a quick fire romance, for me.

I’m not sure if this counts as a spoiler or not, but Colton and Lane from ‘The Whispering Dark’ made an appearance! I actually did a happy gasp out loud, I was so pleased to see them. I won’t give you any more information about the connection between the novels or characters in case you do view that as a spoiler, but it brought me JOY so I had to mention it.

‘Your Blood, My Bones’ is dark, twisty, tense and brimming with atmosphere. It’s a perfect read for those wanting a YA/NA fantasy horror with minimal romance, but all of the tension and emotion of a full-blown romance.

I didn’t love ‘Your Blood, My Bones’ in the same soul-deep way that I do ‘The Whispering Dark’, but Kelly Andrew remains an auto-buy author for me and I cannot wait to see what she does next.

Thank you to Gollancz and NetGalley for the review copy.

Written by Sophie

I really liked Your Blood, My Bones. It was a great read that I actually managed to finish in one day due to not being able to put it down!
This was also the first book I've read by Kelly Andrew, though I also own The Whispering Dark, which I'm now really excited to read.
Your Blood, My Bones has a slow-burn romance, curses, immortality, creepy eldritch creatures, magic, and so much more!

I really liked the friendship between Wyatt, Peter, and James, and they were all great characters.
The romance was a friend's rivals to lovers, and sadly, I didn't love it...
That's mainly due to my own problem of not overly enjoying the friends to lovers dynamic, I did grow to like the romance by the end, though!

They were a couple twists in the story that surprised me as well as some really well-done creepy scenes that I enjoyed.
The book also made me cry so much at the end, so be warned!
It's not often a book that makes me cry, so that's definitely an accomplishment!
Your Blood, My Bones was a fun read that I really liked and that I would definitely recommend checking out!

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Orion/Gollancz for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: death, horror, blood, injury, torture, violence, bugs, fungi, cults, implied sexual assault

Years ago Wyatt Westlock was sent away from the place she called home- and the beloved friends she’d made there, intelligent and vibrant James and quiet, severe Peter. After her father’s death Wyatt inherits the farm at Willow Heath and returns after five years, intent on burning down every memory of her past. Walking through it she makes a horrifying discovery in the basement- Peter shackled in chains, left for dead and a prisoner of a cult that has operated for years that Wyatt’s family was part of. Unknown to Wyatt, who remembers their childhood together as peaceful and joyful, Peter is immortal but capable of dying and used for decades as a human sacrifice. He can’t leave without committing a terrible crime in return: by ending the Westlock line for good and killing Wyatt, no matter their past. As the spells defending the property from the dark forces in the forest begin to fail, Wyatt is forced to release Peter and turn to him for aid in connecting to the magic she’s hidden from for years. Wyatt knows that Peter will kill her for freedom but after ghosts begin emerging around the property and it starts to rot from within, she has no other choice- especially after James returns to warn her against trusting in Peter. As the past digs its claws even deeper into the three of them, and Wyatt is forced to reconcile the reality of her past with the horror around her, things take an even more unsettling and disturbing turn to an epic, tragic conclusion.

I raced through this book, reading over three-quarters in one sitting. This is disturbing and dark, woven with beautiful prose and engrossing, complicated characters from the first page. Wyatt is an incredible main character, her journey from realising that so much of her past was a lie to embracing her powers despite the trauma behind them. By comparison, Peter is completely broken, a huge contradiction but incredibly brave even as the evil in the forest calls to him with reminders of his brief lives. I read this author’s first book, “The Whispering Dark”, and enjoyed it (there’s an enjoyable cameo from those characters here which made me so happy); Your Blood, My Bones” is just incredible on a brand new level. The tension and atmosphere of the setting are so powerful. After all, they’re trapped inside Willow Heath for nearly the whole book, and you feel unnerved even as you can’t put the book down because you need to know what will happen next. “Your Blood, My Bones” is devastating and horrifying, a combination of horror and deep love that shouldn’t work but does as people have to leave behind their past selves to try and make it into the future.

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC.

What a great book! With gothic atmosphere, witches, immortals and love (that shouldn't work, but does!). We even got some throwback to Kelly Andrews previous book! My only wish was that the characters weren't 18 - for the most part I thought they were in their 20s, until prom was mentioned.

Really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to pick up other books by the author. Really wonderful and fast paced.

This ended up being a book for the vibes: it’s dramatic and often creepy, with end-of-the-world heartbreak and heartstrings pulled as taut as narrative would allow. This is by no means a bad thing in and of itself, and if someone is looking for just the vibes and fairly unhealthy levels of codependency, this story will probably work for them.

For me, this fell short on several fronts. The first and the most important one is the magic system. I feel like the author skirted around it (or just didn’t explain her idea sufficiently) and so it ended up being too vague to make sense, to an extent affecting the pacing too. The more the plot progressed, the more questions I had and the fewer answers were provided, which for me doesn’t spell ideal reading experience.

The second most important thing would be the writing. For the most part, the overwrought sentences serve their purpose and create the intended atmosphere, but closer to the end it definitely felt like I read one too many metaphors for someone’s soul figuratively leaving their body, and the inventive adjectives started to grate on me.

As for the characters, I thought they were at their most interesting in flashbacks, and if I had to pick a favorite, it would be James - ironic, since he had less screen time and almost no internal monologue than the two leads, but I guess that just indicates that the book might’ve benefitted from cutting some of that out. With that and a clearer magic system, it would’ve been a more enjoyable read for me than it ended up being.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an early review copy.

Though it brims with natural horror, mysterious forests, generational curses and beasts marauding as men, at its heart this is a story about the formative years of childhood, friends who feel like family and tragic first love. It's the tale of an almost-immortal boy, cursed to die again and again as his bones are ground into dust to raise wards against the dark, and of a girl, whose magic-filled blood can fight off monsters. Each of them must kill the other to save the world from evil, but as a strange, magnetic bond between them grows, it becomes increasingly impossible for them to do so.

Kelly Andrew has a way with words. I lost track of how many quotes I highlighted. Each chapter is filled with brilliantly apt and unique metaphors, a deep knowledge of plant life and enough suspense and claustrophobia to keep your heart beating fast. This won't be the last book of hers I pick up!

The central three characters are well-written too. Within their found family, they notice and point out each other's flaws, rant and rage at one another and rarely reveal their most important secrets, yet they still fiercely love and protect each other, their years of history binding them together like three interwoven trees. I love how platonic love is explored alongside romantic love, acknowledging how life-defining friendships can be.

Pick this up if you love a nostalgic scary story with interesting magic, characters to root for and beautiful prose.

I didn't expect to be sobbing my eyes out on a Saturday morning as I finished reading this book, but there we go. A slobbering mess. Your Blood, My Bones is that book I wish I had written myself. Yeah, it's one of those.  It's an ode to the bittersweet nostalgia. A sort of acceptance and a good-bye to those days gone, to the you that once was, to the possibilities that may have been but never were, not truly. Frankly, I feel like a demon, feeding on tragic love stories. Give me frilly romance and I'll turn my nose up at it. Wrap that romance, true love, into tragic and twisted circumstances, and I'll lap it up and I'll cry while doing it. This book was equal parts horrible, sweet and salvation.
Your Blood, My Bones is quite the dark paranormal story that has an air of romance and horror. Horror more than romance. Romance through horror. But definitely teetering to the horror side more. Ah, you know what, it's all so twisted together like Wyatt, Peter and James. I am truly reluctant to give any further detail about this story than the blurb already reveals - it's best to go into this completely trusting that it will deliver and discover it in its aching inevitability. 
The writing skill Kelly Andrew possesses is a triumph for what this story needed to be like. Without Andrew's chosen words, her particular self, this story could have fallen completely in on itself. Word by word, chapter by chapter, this book teases out strong emotion. Its alternating POVs give insight from Wyatt and Peter - a push and pull relationship where both are hiding secrets from each other. Wyatt, by the way, is a girl. This is not M/M romance, even if Wyatt's name may suggest otherwise. Turns out, Wyatt is considered a gender neutral name and in a sense, there is also a reason why Wyatt was named Wyatt. In addition to making the pages bleed with emotion, Andrew can also write setting... The forests, the evils - ancient and more recent, the visuals of witchy abilities, the curse of immortality, the dark ambition of men thinking they can reap a soul for their own benefit. That's right. This story is more than a childhood friendship turned to love and frustrated teenagers, with slight Peter Pan references thrown in for measure. Dark, twisted, and yet, delightful. 
I mean, anyone who has read this book says they will read everything Kelly Andrew will publish. Yep, me too.

Your Blood, My Bones is a slower but beautiful and emotional read. It’s a story of love and betrayal, filled with secrets and impossible choices. The novel focuses on the deep and complicated relationship between Wyatt, Peter, and James, who used to be inseparable but are now forced to stand against each other. The pace is rather slow, but we get a detailed insight into the characters, their feelings, and the motivation behind their actions. All three of them are nuanced and fascinating.

While various creatures haunt the forest, the characters are mostly trapped in the Westlocks’ cottage, making the atmosphere dark and claustrophobic. There is something unsettling in this story, as secrets and lies come to light, and we cannot be sure who to trust anymore. The novel has elements of gothic and supernatural, as well as some pretty scary scenes. Regardless, it is an emotional, heart-breaking story about love and friendship at its core.

Andrew just knows how to write such great atmosphere and these knotty characters that you relish reading about. This supernaturally tinged Gothic mystery read like a charm with an exploration of untapped power, cyclical violence and the darkness within ourselves.

A dark and twisty gothic horror, Your Blood My Bones is a chilling tale with an intense atmosphere. The plot and character development were gripping, but the writing style was not my favourite. I enjoyed it fine, but I'm not sure it's a book I'd go back to!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Your Blood, My Bones
Fantasy
Kelly Andrew
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

• ʀɪᴛᴜᴀʟꜱ • ꜱᴇᴄʀᴇᴛꜱ • ᴍᴏɴꜱᴛᴇʀꜱ •

This book had a lot of world building and character development right at the start, and so I found the pacing quite slow to begin with, but after a few chapters, it got a lot better.

I liked the dual POVs, and the extra POV towards the end was nice. I wish there was a 3rd POV throughout the book from The Beast or another character.

I liked the writing style, but some of the word choices felt odd. I found I had to look them up, and it happened so often that it pulled me out of the story when it was just unnecessary. For example: "sepulcher", "bucolic", "camphoraceous" (although this 100% depends on the reader 😅).

I loved the plot and the characters themselves. They were relatable and likeable, but they had flaws and their own demons to face. My heart broke for Peter and what he had endured for all those years. I wish he could've found peace in some way.

The plot twists were great, although I did manage to predict a few.

The creatures in the woods and The Beast made me so curious. I wanted to know even more about them and their origins, etc.

The atmosphere was great. It was tense, full of longing and desire. There was cruelty, but there was also a sense of hope.

This book gave me similar vibes to The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue in the sense that multiple lives are lived across hundreds of years, all because of a misspoken bargain.

I haven't read any other books by this author before, but I definitely will now.

*Thank you to @Netgalley, the author, and the publishers for providing this ARC. This is my own opinion and an honest review, which I am leaving voluntarily*

Title: Your Blood, My Bones By Kelly Andrew

Release Date: April,2nd 2024

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stars

Wyatt Westlock inherits her childhood farmhouse with one intention: to burn it down. However, during a final walkthrough, she discovers her former best friend, Peter, chained in the basement, having suffered countless ritualistic deaths on the property. Peter, semi-immortal and bound to the farm, needs to end the Westlock lineage to break free. As dark forces gather and Wyatt's parents' protective spells weaken, they must work together to repair the wards. Despite their history and Peter's oath to kill Wyatt, they must rely on each other to survive when the past resurfaces unexpectedly.

"Your Blood, My Bones" by Kelly Andrew is an intense and gripping read that delves deep into themes of loyalty, fate, and the darkest aspects of human nature. This is a captivating tale that blends twisted romance with dark fantasy elements.

The intricate bond shared between Wyatt and Peter, entwined with themes of love and friendship between Wyatt, Peter and James, enriches the storyline.

Kelly Andrew navigates dark magic, death, and resuscitation, immersing readers in a haunting and intriguing world. With unexpected twists and turns, the story kept me engaged until the gripping conclusion.

Tropes:

Dark Fantasy
Twisted Romance
Forbidden Love
Immortality
Friendship
Magic and Witchcraft
Gothic Atmosphere

Thank you to Orion Publishing Group | Gollancz, The author Kelly Andrew & NetGalley for an advanced reader copy (ARC) in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this.

Your Blood, My Bones had some brilliant gothic, eldritch vibes centering on Peter/Pedyr, Wyatt and James. A trio of unlikely friends who were thrust together every summer until Wyatt was dragged away by her mother.

Years later Wyatt gets a letter from her father and returns to Willow Heath. What she finds makes her question everything she ever knew about Peter, James and herself. She finds herself with more questions than answers and what is skulking around in the forest surrounding the little homestead?

I loved the references to Peter Pan. Peter and James and the cat, Slightly.

It was a really great book. The writing is fantastic, the author’s ability to set a visual scene and to create unsettling and creeping dread is really good.

The novel is a character-driven story, and the three protagonists created are the beating heart of the narrative. Their characters development with intricate backstories, their relationships and inner conflicts are just beautifully crafted, that just pulls you deeper into every page.

The plot is rich with mystery and supernatural elements that were expertly interwoven. Overall, “Your Blood, My Bones” is a fantastic book, that leaves you on the edge of your set, pulls at your heartstrings. I really enjoy it.

Arc generously provided via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I had loved The Whispering Dark and couldn't wait to read Your Blood, My Bones.
Once again, I absolutely loved the writing which is both beautiful and raw.
The characters are so well developed: they're flawed and they're unique. I loved the trio Peter, James & Wyatt.
In the first half, I sometimes felt the lack of draw, of purpose though. They actually have something to deal with, but they were so much "in their heads" I missed the point sometimes. The main reason is the rhythm that, in my opinion, goes like this for each chapter: a slow beginning, descriptions and feelings. Then something happens, it is usually gripping and exciting and ends on a sort of cliffhanger…but the next chapter doesn't start right where the rush ended. And it slows again and so on. I can't say I loved that aspect. Despite being interesting I usually didn't read a lot of chapters in a row and sometimes even felt frustrated.
That being said, the Gothic vibes, the darkness (far darker that I anticipated) and the beautiful writing made it a very good book for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!

If I was going to give this book a different title, it would certainly be American Gothic. This was such a fun, creepy little book, with just the right amount of heartbreak and magic. I thoroughly enjoyed it, much more than I expected to. FMC Wyatt is headstrong and has one foot stuck in the past. MMC Peter has lived hundreds of lives and yet he's the oldest he's ever been. This was a book that straddles multiple genres - magical realism, thriller, horror. The vibes are honestly immaculate. If you enjoyed Andrew's first book The Whispering Dark, keep an eye out for some familiar faces too.

Recommended for any who loved Mexican Gothic, Ninth House, A Study in Drowning