ARC review : The Reaper's Daughter by KM Randall

I’ve always felt like an average girl ... except for my strange relationship with death. You could say I like to court it. Whether I’m soaring through the air as a flyer for Specter University’s cheer squad, or speeding down the steepest mountain with only grace and balance keeping me from an icy end, I’ve always needed to feel a rush. But now Death is courting me―in more ways than one. First, there’s Rishi, a rogue death deity who has a penchant for annoying me nearly to my grave and whose intense gaze has the power to see right through me. Then there’s Hades, who I’d rather had stayed just a myth. Now that he knows I exist, he’s not going to leave me alone until I meet the same end as my mother.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention her? I spent my whole life thinking she had died when I was a baby, but now I’ve found out she’s much more than dead. Fifty years ago, Hades banished my mother from the underworld and took away her ability to cross over souls―souls that have wandered lost through the world ever since. Now she wants me to clean up the mess. You may have​ heard of her before ...

They call her the Grim Reaper.

I received this book from the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Ugh. Not sure where to even begin with this. I am giving it three stars because it wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either...frankly it was either interesting, annoying or boring... So here were are. The concept isn't bad, but the biggest mistake of ANY book can have is when the secondary characters are more interesting than the main ones.

Things I liked? The idea that depending on what you believe in spiritually (or for atheists where you are from) determines what Death God or his/her offspring reaps you when you die. Umm, and Shelby the MC's BFF, that's about it.

Big issues, aside from the one I mentioned above?:

EVERYONE and I do mean EVERYONE acts smarter than Blake, the MC. She spends the first half of the book whining, complaining and trying to find a way around the rules when everyone is screaming at her that souls have to be reaped in a certain time frame in a certain way. She is stubborn to the point of idiocy and has a hard time coping with things she is seeing and experiencing.

Once Blake does accept her powers suddenly she is BAM all super powerful insta-reaper who needs basically no training and doesn't tire like other half breed Death Deities. Also did I mention she is a Mary Sue (albeit an adrenaline junkie). Special Snow Flake who doesn't think she's pretty and is oh so totally AVERAGE.


The only YA trope this novel didn't have was a insta-love and love triangle, so I guess that's something. The book also went about ten pages longer than is should have so hopefully this copy hasn't had an edit yet. There is going to be a sequel, but let's leave a little mystery to what that book will be about instead of giving us a basic plot point run down the final chapter of the current book. Have I mentioned how sick of YA series I am?

This was an easy read and parts were good and enjoyable, nothing really wrong with the writing and I may give this author another chance with a different book.

So....Happy Reading.