Serena’s Review: “Foxglove”

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Book: “Foxglove” by Adalyn Grace

Publishing Info:Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, August 2023

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: The captivating sequel to the Gothic-infused Belladonna, in which Signa and Death face a supernatural foe determined to tear them apart.

A duke has been murdered. The lord of Thorn Grove has been framed. And Fate, the elusive brother of Death, has taken up residence in a sumptuous estate nearby. He’s hellbent on revenge after Death took the life of the woman he loved many years ago…and now he’s determined to have Signa for himself, no matter the cost.

Signa and her cousin Blythe are certain that Fate can save Elijah Hawthorne from prison if they will entertain his presence. But the more time the girls spend with Fate, the more frightening their reality becomes as Signa exhibits dramatic new powers that link her to Fate’s past. With mysteries and danger around every corner, the cousins must decide if they can trust one another as they navigate their futures in high society, unravel the murders that haunt their family, and play Fate’s unexpected games—all with their destinies hanging in the balance.

Dangerous, suspenseful, and seductive, this sequel to Signa and Death’s story is as utterly romantic as it is perfectly deadly.

Review: After loving “Belladonna” when I read it two summers ago, this was one of my most anticipated reads for this year. But as you may have noticed, this was published back in August and here I am only just getting to a review in November. Well, that’s because I have very complicated feelings regarding this book, and even while composing this review, I’m not quite sure how I feel about it all. So, let’s just see where things take us.

One thing I can easily say without qualification is that overall quality of the writing remains excellent in this book. The author has a natural, seamless style to her writing that excels at both painting vivid settings as well as describing deep wells of emotion. My struggles with this book were definitely not down to any lack of ability or talent. Ultimately, I think it’s the structure of the book that failed it. And even saying that, I don’t necessarily have a good solution to the problem, which is probably why I’ve held off on reviewing this one for so long. It’s hard to write a critical review when you can also look at it and understand why all of the choices were made and not have many alternative options to offer for improvement. It’s the rock-meets-hard-place of reviews!

The book is essentially now trying to tell two stories, and that is most notably demonstrated by the fact that the POV is now split between Signa and Blythe. Unfortunately, the needs of either character’s arc individually negatively affected the outcomes of the other character’s story throughout the book. For example, we meet Fate at the very end of the first book. Much of this book is made up of Signa and Death attempting to out-maneuver Fate who, for his own reasons, is out to claim Signa for his own. Thusly, Fate is very much the antagonist of this tale and can be truly despicable at times. Conversely, from Blythe’s perspective we see the fairly obvious set up for book three that is placing these two in a distinctive “enemies-to-lovers” position. So here you have Fate who has been (rightly!) a villain for most of this book also being set up as a romantic interest for the other main character. It’s an uncomfortable and awkward experience when trying to establish how you’re meant to feel about this character.

Further, there’s a great mystery at the heart of this book about Signa’s own identity and Fate’s interest in her. But the very nature of this mystery is at its core one that undercuts much of the progress made in the previous book. “Belladonna” was a perfect exploration of Signa’s identity and abilities, so to have that all regurgitated here was both frustrating and disappointing. Especially when, given the nature of other story decisions, much of the explanation for this mystery felt very obvious right from the start to anyone who was paying attention. I will say, I very much appreciated how the author avoided allowing any of this upheaval to undercut the love story between Signa and Death. There is a very real way that this could have played out differently in a much more angsty, disappointing manner. On the other hand, while what we got from these two was ultimately very good, there also wasn’t very much of it, again because the story was trying to do too much. Death barely showed up on the page at all, it seemed.

The interesting part of this all is that I didn’t dislike Blythe’s chapters. It would be easy to look at this book and think that the solution would be to simply cut out her POV and allow the story more breathing room to finish up Signa’s story. But, as much as I loved Signa in the first book, she was also a fairly passive, frustrating character in this book. There’s another murder mystery (here is the REAL part of the story that could perhaps have been cut somehow) and yet while Signa is constantly saying that she is working on figuring this murder out, Blythe is the one who takes action. Much of this book is Signa reacting to what is going on around her and Blythe, for better or worse, charging in full speed to do something, anything about the madness swirling around her. And, while Fate is made out largely as a villain in this book, the few glimpses we get of him and Blythe outside of this arena were very compelling. For example, they play a game of croquet and I was getting major Anthony/Kate vibes from Fate and Bythe’s competive nature.

So, where does this mess of a review (and book, honestly) leave us? I’m not sure. The story we get for Signa and Death is necessary to wrap up their own tale. And the introduction to Fate and Blythe is necessary to set-up what I imagine will be solely their story in book three. But these two stories don’t sit well together at all, often actively undercutting the success of the other. I was probably most disappointed with the change in Signa from the spunky, coming-into-her-own woman we had in the last book to the much more passive character we had here, one who is again retreading tired ground about her powers and identity. But I’m also super excited about Blythe’s story going forward, so in that way, the book was definitely a success as I’ll be first in line to get my hands on that one. Ultimately, I think that this book will be a bit disappointing to fans of the first book. That said, I also strongly recommend reading it to those same fans as I’m hopeful that some of the discomfort of this book will pay off in the potential strength of the next.

Rating 7: Weighed down by added characters and lore, “Foxglove” fails to live up to the high that was “Belladonna.” That said, it introduces a lot of strong potential for the third book, and I’ll definitely be checking that one out when it arrives!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Foxglove” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Flower Faces and Death as a Character.