Reviews - The Ones We Burn

1.01k reviews for:

The Ones We Burn

Rebecca Mix

3.73 AVERAGE

ninamooner's review

4.0

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

marshii1390's review

5.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I just finished and I thought this book was really unique and beautiful. It’s enemies to lovers with a sapphic twist, and I found the romance to be quite refreshing in the current YA climate full of “Shadow Daddies”.

Our Heroine, Ranka, is a witch who has inherited a deadly power called Blood Magic. Any witch who inherits this power is cursed with an early end to their life, although it grants them certain advantages like advanced healing and increased strength.

Because witches have been persecuted for years, a treaty has been struck granting them immunity as long as one of their blood witches marries the king of the country. Our girl Ranka ends up in this position, called Bloodwinn, with a super secret plan to…dun dun dun….kill the king.

Of course, things do not go as she plans and when she arrives at court, she finds that while she doesn’t want to marry the king, she quite likes him. And he has a sister who happens to catch her eye in another manner. The progression of enemies to friendship here, is developed really well, through the research of an overarching mystery that affects the whole kingdom.

The other thing that that I really appreciated about the book is the relation of the eruption of blood magic in a witch to extreme trauma. There are a lot of underlying themes in this book about how deep rooted traumas can affect us moving forward. I personally really relate to this as I have fibromyalgia and the research shows that fibromyalgia emergence is associated often with physical and emotional traumas.

There are also other themes of how abuse can be manipulated to look like love and the power of forgiveness.

Overall, I give this queer YA fantasy 5/5.

taty_reads's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous challenging tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I’m going against a lot of the reviews and going to say I enjoyed this book. It was pretty good. I didn’t see any reverse racism that people are calling out. And if you read the story you will see why it’s not. Ranka just wanted to find her friend and help her Coven, but that journey changed real quick. Wars, violence, blood, magic I liked it all.

sister2nicolesbookspace_sophie's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

cryptofauna's review

3.75

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I really had high hopes for this book but it wasn’t as great as i had hoped! Definitely wasn’t bad, just took me a little bit to get into and didn’t grab me a whole lot but I was eventually very into it. Loved the characters and I’m always into a bio weapon plot. I heart gay people.