Blog Tour: Slay!

Slay 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Meet SLAY – SLAY do two things and they do them well: they play killer music and they slay killer demons.

When Milly, the lonely daughter of a world-famous opera singer, arrives home to discover that her mum has been taken over by something very evil, she finds herself in mortal danger. But the last people she expects to rescue her are the hottest boy band on the planet…

Enter SLAY: playing kickass gigs in the spotlight, and saving the world from demons in the shadows… Suddenly, Milly’s on the road with JD, Tom, Niv, Zek and Connor, racing against the clock to stop the demons who killed her mum… One thing’s for sure, it’s going to be a hell of a show! 

We're taking a bit of a detour for this blog tour, as I'm actually going to be reviewing the first book rather than the sequel which has just come out! In fact, if you haven't read the first book yet now is the perfect time to because hello....you can binge read both and you don't have to wait for the sequel after finishing Slay! 

It might just be me, but I have seen a lot of YA books in recent years that are focusing on boybands....but I haven't read anything quite like this and I have to say, it was a really refreshing and fun read! I mean, a boyband that slays demons? I knew it was going to be awesome but woah! 

Slay is fast paced, there's plenty of action and fight scenes, the humour had me chuckling and honestly? It kind of reminded me of Supernatural but with a boyband instead of the Winchesters, especially as from the sound of Slay and it's sequel we're going to have the monster of the week formula Supernatural used. 

The boys themselves were hilarious, JD, Connor, Zek, Niv and Tom had some excellent banter amongst them as well as angsty and tragic pasts, (seriously hello mini Winchesters) which helped to pull me in and catch my interest during the first chapter and kept things fun throughout the rest of the book. Their allusions to their "other work" in the first chapter helped too but still, plus the POV switches with Milly also served to excellently build up the tension at the start, before helping keep the story moving throughout. 

Speaking of Milly, I loved that she was intelligent and sarcastic....and knew something weird was going on right at the start. She also could stand up for herself and wouldn't take any crap from any of the boys...or rather JD specifically, and she had realistic and relatable reactions to everything. 

As for the demons...I feel like we get some old school, classic, black eyed demon mythology with some twists! In this particular book, the demons tied back to the Aztecs, as one of the demons was an Aztec Priestess and they wanted to bring an Aztec God in to our world, which as a history nerd...I immensely appreciated. Although I wasn't expecting it when I heard that this was about demons, but honestly, it was so well done and I loved getting the little bits of history both true and fiddled with. 

One thing I have to say, is I liked how diverse the cast was, and not just with POC and mixed race characters, one of the boys was deaf and I really liked how sign language was woven seamlessly into the dialogue with other characters, and some signs explained to us, as well as having it subtly pointed out how few people know it.

There is a bit of romance or at least romantic tension throughout the book but it's not the main focus, although the love triangle may come in to more focus in the next book? I already have a team, I'm not going to lie! I did actually think Curran had rather brutally solved the love triangle towards the end of the book, which was a shock! 

Honestly, Slay is such a fun read, it's like Supernatural but with boyband members, and I loved getting the badass demon fighting...but also snapshots of their boyband life, touring and so on. We also get slight Mission Impossible kinda vibes with the whole, having to steal an artefact thing but maybe that was me. Yes this does have a couple tropey/cliche moments and yes....it's a bit ridiculous...but in a good way. It fits with the vibe of the book, it doesn't take itself too seriously and I had so much fun reading it, I breezed through it in a couple of hours! I'm going to be looking forward to more adventures with this cast of characters and I am definitely going to be picking up Slay: On Tour...because demons, boybands and Japan!