Book review: Passionaries (The Blessed #2) by Tonya Hurley

Agnes, Cecelia, and Lucy watched as Sebastian sacrificed himself for what he believed in. Will the girls trust that their destiny as saints and martyrs and perform the miracles as Sebastian instructed? Or lose faith in themselves and each other in his absence? Time is running out for them to make a decision, and the fate of the world lies in the balance.

Passionaries is the sequel to The Blessed, a book I read last year and reviewed rather… unfavorably.  However I did say I’d see it out since I saw potential in it.  I kind of regret it, to be honest.

Passionaries continues the story of Lucy, Agnes and Cecelia a few months after their experiences at the Church of the Precious Blood.  Despite that they should have been keeping in touch and getting through things together, they haven’t so much as texted each other since the investigation into the events and Sebastian’s death.  That was the first problem I had with it; the fact that I didn’t really sympathize with what had happened to them and then they just abandon each other made me really not believe when they talked about how close they are.

A problem I had with the last book was one that a lot of people seemed to have: the fact that it was hard to tell whether they really were reincarnated saints, or if Sebastian was as mentally ill as suggested and he was just influencing them to believe they were because he had the delusion himself and they happened to share the right names.  There’s plenty of proof that there’s something supernatural going on here, but I still found myself doubting who they actually were.  For instance, Cecelia actually shreds two men with some kind of whip sword.  No mercy.  It’s actually really gory.  Am I really supposed to believe she’s a saint when she’s so willing to commit gross atrocities like that?  Honestly.

The one thing that I liked about the first book was the sequences with Dr. Frey.  They were the only thing that I felt was grounded in any sort of reality.  I was hoping it would continue in this book so that there would still be something redeeming about it, if nothing else improved.  I thought that this series had nowhere to go but up.  Unfortunately I was wrong.  Dr. Frey goes from a psychiatrist who’s genuinely worried about Sebastian and the girls to a cardboard-cutout villain who has an evil entourage.  We even get some backstory for him, but it doesn’t help.  All we know is that he used to be a priest, and he defected from religion until he joined the hospital.  There’s honestly no reason why anyone’s doing anything they do in the book.  Yes, saints are supposed to be disbelieved and persecuted, but this goes way too far.

Pretty much all this book does is prove that it could, in fact, get worse.  The exact same bad points from the first book are there, and more are piled on.  I really wish Hurley had improved.  And clearly there are people who enjoyed it.  But I just don’t get why.  Not one I’d recommend.