Emotional rollercoaster with a dash of self loathing on a drug induced journey of forgetting the past. That was where Aelia had been when she was living life as a thief after losing everything when she was once a queen. And so was this book. Every turning point was a chance to bump into someone she knew, someone she fell in love with, someone she could fall for, someone she could get lost in. It was push and pull and wrenching of hearts and regrets and so much went into this book that I could not tell you how much you need to read this to understand what I felt when I read it. While there was pain, there was still love and hope and a chance despite the odds of everything.

There’s action, there’s magic, there’s vampires. An ancient evil reborn. You’ll have to read the book to find out about that last one because it’s a doozy!

I gave this book 3 stars, because although it didn’t quite work for me, the story is full of promise.

This book is the first in a series, so I’m hoping the things that didn’t work for me here will be improved in the next book. There was a lot of potential here, but unfortunately I felt confused most of the time. I didn’t really get the chance to live in the story, I felt like my attention was constantly ricocheting around trying to understand things and link things together. I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, but I felt very much like that every time I sat down to read this book. Therefore, it took me much longer to finish this book than it should have. This could’ve been just a me problem, as I didn’t get a good solid chunk of time to read a lot of the book at once, I had to keep coming back to it.

I needed more world building and more time invested in the little things that build and deepen our understanding of the characters and their relationships. I never really felt attached to any of the characters. There is value in fleshing things out and showing things more to the reader rather than barreling ahead and skipping from one location to another for the sake of plot progression.

I did like the characters, even if I didn’t feel particularly attached to them, and I really liked the way the love triangle played out. I’ve very interested to see how Caiden’s storyline unfolds.

There’s enough here to keep me somewhat interested in what comes next for the story as a whole, so I do plan to read book 2 when it comes out.

*I was provided with an advanced reader copy of this book and I am leaving this review of my own accord. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

Okay so went into the book in full adult fantasy mode expecting the world building and the mind bending to be front and center to set the stage for perhaps continuation of the series. Perhaps I went I. With my expectations a bit too high.

So having said that I will also say read your trigger warnings with this book there is sex and drug addiction among other things that are addressed with Aelia specifically our FMC.

So for me my largest issue that kept me from truly loving this book was the lack of world building. There was so much potential and it was a big let down ngl, however another bump in the story telling for me was the romantic aspect which felt rushed and not nearly fleshed out enough for me by the BIG twist at the end.

Again I loved the idea of this book and I loved some of the character development as well but most of the characters were forgettable and lack luster.

I rate this book a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and for spice I’ll say

“A Curse of Breath and Blood” is KW Foster’s debut romantasy novel and, it definitely did not disappoint!

After reading several books with younger FMC’s (who were sometimes harder to relate to) it was so refreshing to have an older FMC (she’s over 30). Aelia is fierce, but flawed; strong, but weak. There are mentions of substance abuse/addiction, emotional/verbal abuse and hints of violence, so please proceed with caution!

From Princess to Queen to Mercanary, Aelia has been through IT! Her relationships with Amolie, Roderick and Tharan are very well done and, even though they are side characters, I certainly got attached to them and thoroughly enjoyed the scenes that they were in. I will admit, however, that I was very unsure of Tharan at first. But, now I am utterly IN LOVE with him (no, you cannot have him. He’s mine, I called dibs ha ha). Heads up! While there is a love triangle there is NO cheating (a fine line is certainly walked though) and you’ll find yourself just as torn as Aelia! Both love interests are swoon worthy, in their own way and in their own time.



The storyline is mostly dual POV, but it flows very well from chapter to chapter and doesn’t feel disjointed or choppy. The world building and descriptions of the different courts, the epic battles, and the magic were very well done and made me feel like I was right there with Aelia and the gang!



Watching Aelia grow, deal with her past, confront her fears/trauma, and heal was incredible! I felt like it was very well addressed and handled with grace. Although, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the price that she ends up having to pay after the deal she made.



There were a couple of quotes that hit hard, but I think the one that gutted me the most was “



I still can’t believe the ending!!! I have SO MANY questions that I NEED answered! Already looking forward to book 2! Highly recommend!

I was lucky enough to get an ARC of

ARC review. DNF at 20%. I'm so confused. Things are happening and being said in a jumpy sort of way. Names and places are being brought up like I should know about them already but they've never been mentioned before. I didn’t understand where they’re going. I thought I knew and then they got close while running from blood riders (what’s a water horse and why are they eating blood riders?) but suddenly they’re still 5 days away? The timeline keeps jumping around and I'm having a hard time figuring out what happened when in the past. Things are happening very fast and I'm just too confused and not In a mysterious story-building “ooo how’s it gonna end” kind of way. It’s more of a jumpy ADHD sort of way. For the longest time I thought Aelia was Sylph then I found out it’s Caiden that’s sylph. How does aelia have magic if she’s human? That’s not explained. How is she calling her dagger back to her after she threw it? That’s not explained. Did Baylis go missing at the same time Aelia left to marry Gideon? If Gideon had her the whole time then why didn’t Aelia know? Or has Aelia been away from Gideon for 5 years already? I don’t know maybe these get answered. Maybe i interpreted things wrong but I’m more confused than anything. It doesn’t seem to flow properly.

I fear the only redeeming part was Tharan. I didn’t believe the romance between Caiden and Aelia at all. The characters lacked depth and everything felt rushed. I wish I’d liked this arc, the story had so much potential.

This is a hard read because of the abuse and mental health issues the fmc Aelia faces. She has been through so much and we don’t even have the whole story yet on what exactly happened to her kingdom. I am intrigued on what will happen with Caiden and hope Aelia gets to be happy with Tharan. But I am concerned for what Baylis will do to Aelia’s mental state in the next book.

I really loved the premise of this book. There were immediately interesting characters to start the story and a unique plot forming.

Unfortunately, the plot and characters started getting convoluted and confusing around 30%. I really struggled to follow the story and kept feeling like I had missed something. There was a lot of promise for a story that did not feel well fleshed out, and there were too many things happening and also not happening at once for well-connected, flowing story. The relationships felt random and not developed and I was not invested in any of them unfortunately.

4 stars up to 30% after that 2 stars.

Thanks to the author for the arc of this book.