Reviews with content warning for Death - The Witch and the Vampire

A sapphic Rapunzel retelling with vampires, witches, and angst. How could I not read this book?!
Ava and her Mother are both vampires, with Ava being kept locked in the attic for the past two years. Her Mother regularly drains her of her magic in order to maintain her human disguise, and often leaves her to the cruel experiments of her step-father. Ava longs to escape, and often looks out the window searching for her best friend.
Kaye is a Flame witch, and has a single minded goal, wipe out vampires. Vampires killed her Mother, and she will let nothing get in the way for her revenge. She used to be best friends with Ava, but after seeing her in an attic window with blood running down her face knows she must be put down.
When Ava finally escapes the two must work together to get through the forest alive, no matter how much Kaye seems to hate her now. But the forest seems to be dying, and Ava's Mother has plans of her own.
I'll be honest with you dear reader, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Like I loved it! A lot! I didn't expect all the world building, the lore, the history. There was so much to this world and I was so blown away. I thought I knew what was going to happen in this story but the reveals that kept happening really swept the rug out from under me!
I really loved how the book had such themes as humans as the real monsters, fighting for freedom, and what happens if you hold your loved ones too tightly.
I will say I feel this book is 95% fantasy/angst and 5% sapphic romance but I'm not complaining. So many sapphic books are very light hearted romance, and it was nice to read a book where the focus was on more action and adventure instead.
One last thing I want to say I am so surprised and disappointed by how many reviewers are lowly rating this book because it is "not exactly like the original Rapunzel story." (People please use your critical thinking skills and look up what a retelling is. If it wasn't clear by the fact this is a book about vampires, why would you think this is going to be like the original fairy tale?) I also saw so many bad reviews complaining about the formatting for netgalley arcs, which isn't at all relevant to the actual story.

I highly recommend this book, especially for fans of world building, vampires, and of course fairy tales. I will definitely be reading more from Francesca Flores.

The Cover
Holy cow. Do y'all see this cover! I would like to give a round of applause for the cover artist, Olga Grlic! This is truly a work of art, my goodness. I love how we get so much information from them holding hands.
Ava's nails are blood red, with the ring from her Mother perched on her finger. I like how Kaye is almost seeming to be about to push it off of her. (Some symbolism of Ava breaking away from her Mother perhaps?)
Kaye's nails are gold, like the magic she wields, and her favored Flame witch bracelet is show on her wrist. (You guys do you see how detailed this is!) All around their hands are fireflies, flowers, and forestry. I believe the flowers are the ones that are heavily featured through the book. (I won't spoil for you what they do!)
I love how the title is lower on the page, it just flows so well with the composition. I really feel like the font works to convey the mood perfectly, and it goes with the cover.

Really the only microscopic complaint I would have is I feel the authors name would have been better suited to being white like the title font.
Cover design by Olga Grlic Cover illustration by Colin Verdi

Content Warnings

brewingespresso's review

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emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Okay here we go.
I wanted to love this book, but I’d say I only enjoyed it. It definitely drew me in at the end and got me to the “well I gotta finish it now.” point, however the overall plot is kinda rocky. I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of time dedicated to planning out the whole book and instead it was made up along the way. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t realize it was a Rapunzel adaptation until I read the description. The only similarities are that Ava is trapped in a tower and forced to grow out her hair. The rest is so wildly different that I had kinda just chalked the similarities up to coincidence. For a book with such “strong” main characters, their resolve flip-flops around and they lose so many fights. Then there was Tristan. Tristan was written in a way that makes me assume he was meant to be even just a little important. Nah. He’s just there. Sometimes.

When he died I wasn’t in the slightest bit upset or shocked and the characters even seem to glide over it.

I also found that the plot twist was not only, not very twisty, but it made no sense??? Like you’re telling me everyone is just cool with that arrangement? Not a chance! Now I know I’ve ragged on this book quite a bit, but here are the things I liked. I thought the romance was quite sweet and beautiful. I’m already a sucker for enemies -> lovers but friends-> enemies -> lovers??? Yes please. I thought that, while not morally very strong, Ava and Kaye were still lovable characters when not being obtuse. Overall, I’d say it’s maybe worth the read. Maybe.

Content Warnings

taelights's review against another edition

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I honestly really not vibing with this story. I kept hoping it would get better but it honestly it didn't.

The writing is bad and repetitive. The world building is bad and hard to understand. Plus both main characters are both so annoying to me.

Also like i don't have issues with witches and/or vampires in general becaus I think there are respectful ways to write those types of creatures. But then there are ways to write those creatures that play into antisemitism. Personally I thought this book kind of protrayed vampires, and in a way witches, with antisemitic / blood libel themes which I personally foubd uncomfortable and yucky.

Content Warnings

atthelibrarywithmegan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I received a digital arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited for this book, and it was unfortunately a let down. It was marketed as a sapphic Rapunzel retelling, and honestly the only Rapunzel aspect was one of the girls having long hair. As several other reviewers have also said, this was much more middle grade writing than young adult writing. It felt more appropriate for maybe 13-15 year olds than 18-25 year olds. The writing is incredibly repetitive and I really had to push through it to finish it. It also feels a bit clumsy as well. I honestly probably would have dnf’d if I hadn’t wanted to write an accurate review.

TW for emotionally abusive/manipulative/negligent mother, physically abusive/negligent stepfather, emotionally abusive/manipulative father, murder, and death of a parent.

Content Warnings

diannasbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

*Thank you Wednesday books and netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review!*

I was very excited to receive this book. Sapphic? Yes please! Rapunzel retelling! Yes! Witches, and vampires? It all sounded amazing. However this read as an upper middle grade rather than a YA for me. Which there isn’t anything wrong with that. I read it fairly fast. I really like the world that Francesca created. The romance was adorable, and I loved the world building as well. Overall it’s a quick and easy fantasy read!

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ezwolf's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

This book has a gorgeous cover and a very intriguing summary, but the book itself was a terrible let down.

The most interesting character through the whole book is one of the side characters who has maybe ten lines. I disliked both Ava and Kaye and they were written with almost no differing personalities (at one point I read half a chapter from Kaye’s POV thinking it was Ava’s) and I was over half way through the book and their characters should have been well established.

The whole book was all telling, not showing, us anything and so many things were repeated and drilled in I almost feel like the author thought people would lack the ability to have long term memory or good reading comprehension. This was most problematic when it came to character relationships. I am still not convinced that Ava and Kaye like each other in any way and Tristan was just like a weird addition to try and give them friends and some kind of backstory? Nothing any of them did made me inclined to think they had ever been friends.

The way things were named was also so uncreative, ie witches who could manipulate fire are Flame witches and the ones who could use water are Storm witches, a literal wall of bones was the Bone Wall, a tree connected to the heart of a vampire is the Heart Tree.

Overall, the plot had a lot of great potential but suffered greatly from how it was written.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

EDIT: Oh, I cannot believe I forgot this part, but including crosses burning vampires seemed like a bizarre choice? By placing this story in a fantasy world you can do whatever you want with vampire lore (these vampires don’t burn in the sun so clearly we’re not adhering to original vampire characteristics), but added the cross, to me, implies that Jesus existed in this world and they adhere to some kind of religion but that’s never discussed.

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centrifugepolitics's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is somewhere between a 2.5 and a 3 for me, but I think it's fair to round up based on the great potential in the premise and the central relationship which I thought was sweet if underdeveloped. I was instantly drawn in by the premise and the cover (the cover!) of this one but was let down by the execution and the surface level plot.

Pros: The main relationship, and even the brief, brief three-way friendship with Ava, Kaye, and Tristan had really good seeds and I thought the romance was actually really sweet and believable. I wanted to see more of it and more of them working together (which we unfortunately don't get, the two separate for almost the entire climax).

The enemies-to-lovers aspect started really well and you could see these two girls who, due to circumstances beyond their control, had ended up on opposite sides. The tension between them is real up until about 40% into the book. The story should have stuck with that slowburn but, as I go into below, the characters don't have the depth to allow that to develop later.

I liked the vampire-witch dynamic of the world and that aspect should have been emphasized instead of the two countries/emperor/government stuff. The idea that

witches were hated until they were utilized as vampire slayers and that complicated history

should have been at the forefront.

Cons: This really isn't a Rapunzel retelling at all and I think the book suffers from being pitched as one. The only resemblance is Ava being kept captive by her mother in a tower in the beginning, and having long hair but she escapes 10% into the book and gets a haircut like 20% in. More time should have been spent developing the worldbuilding and characters' interactions instead of squeezing the story into a Rapunzel box.

The characters, their thoughts, and relationships never get much deeper than what is written on the page. Everyone states exactly what they are thinking and then acts on the shallowest impulse. There could be some interesting exploration of Ava's messed-up relationship with her mother or Kaye's complicated relationship with Tristan, but it never really gets explored which feels like such a waste. Nothing lingers long enough to be delved into because everyone is busy running with whatever new characterization they have in the moment.

This book also has a weird tone issue which is affected by weak worldbuilding. The characters use a lot of modernisms so it never feels like a real fantasy and the country, culture, and history are never meaningfully significant to what is happening. Characters die, sometimes brutally, and it feels like it comes out of nowhere because the stakes and character depth haven't been developed enough to bear the weight.

All the parents dying one by one at the end was really abrupt and then Tristan's death was completely glossed over. There's no sense of lasting impact.

There's a much more mature story lurking somewhere in the background but we aren't reading it.

The vampires are intriguing but one second they're killing people for fun/to survive and the next second they feel really bad about it and only want to drink animal blood. This could be an interesting dilemma, what does the world look like when this species has to feed on humans to survive? Can that be worked out? But this book doesn't seem interested in looking deeper at that.

Overall: Compelling premise, first draft execution. I would have liked to see the actual interesting bits of this book be given first billing.

I was given an ARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Content Warnings

bookstarbri's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-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? It's complicated

3.5

Before I get started on this, can I just say this is my favorite cover of the year? Like. Wow.

Anyway, literally from chapter one, I was really into it. There was so much suspense in that first chapter and it just really got me excited to read the rest of this book. And overall, I liked so much about it. One of my favorite things was the vampire and witch lore in this. It was all so well thought out and in depth. Though there was info-dumping, I thought it was really interesting so I didn't mind it! I LOVEEEEE having a vampire story where the vampire isn't all sad about being a vampire all the time. Like that's fine sometimes, but this was a nice change of pace in that regard.

I also wasn't expecting Ava to be a witch and a vampire, so that was a really nice touch as well

The characters were cool too, mostly. Ava was amazing, would die for her. She's such a great character through and through and was definitely my favorite of the book. Kaye got on my nerves a lot haha. For the first third of the book, she had me wanting to scream. It made sense at times, but then other times...Anyway, it took me awhile to warm up to her. As far as side characters go, there weren't that many which was interesting. The MCs had a past friend, Tristan. I won't go into too much detail about him, but I will say I was surprised at the direction the author chose for him. I don't think I loved the direction, but it was a surprise, to say the least lol.

There were a lot of antagonists in this book. More antagonists than side characters interestingly enough. That's not a bad thing, but I was surprised at just how many there were and how they all connected. This book had a lot of action and it did a lot of moving around and I appreciated that it was all pretty much very easy to follow. Of course, I read an ARC of this book so I don't know if the finished copy will have a map, but I think it definitely needs one because then it'll be even easier to kind of follow everything, but overall the author did a good job with that especially for how much was going on!

Now for why I didn't give it 5 stars. There were a lot of points in this book (mostly in the first half) where the author is quite repetitive in information we're given. Like at one point, Ava thinks something and then it's reiterated again a few paragraphs later. I'm being lenient on this since it's an ARC, but it occurred a lot. I also felt like one of the antagonists didn't feel as grandiose as she should have? Like she was very much a higher player so to speak than the other antagonists and she just didn't feel like it? She didn't have that weighty presence that I would've liked. Finally, I wish the book would've had more surprising plot twists. There was really only one I didn't see coming. This author writes action well so I think pairing that with some really shocking plot twists would've been fun, but we just didn't get too many of those.

Overall, this was fun! It definitely isn't this huge, sweeping romance so if that's what you're looking for, be prepared for that. However, the romance we do get is sweet enough and it is an enemies-to-lovers trope (I know publishers like throwing around enemies-to-lovers a lot now, but this one is actually good)! If there happens to be a sequel (there's no cliffhanger, but the ending definitely leaves room for a sequel), I would absolutely read it!

Thanks so much to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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