Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - The Witch and the Vampire

It was okay. I was really excited about a queer retelling of repunzel, but it was barely repunzel —the only thing that was the same was being locked in a tower and having long hair. it was an easy listen on my way to work, and it did grab me at some points but lost me a lot because of the many internal monologues, info-dumping lore, and I didn’t really connect with the characters at all. If the story was more fleshed out and more of showing not telling, it could have been great. It also reads not as a YA, but more for an 8th grader let’s say. I did enjoy the ending though, and would have appreciated a “few years later” epilogue kinda deal.

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vixenreader's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Repetition of themes and plot points, and hammering home said themes and plot points are the book’s weakness, but the central characters, romance, and immense folklore and imagination make up for the novel’s shortcomings.

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anastasia_raf's review

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slow-paced

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

2.75

"Trust looks like a girl who wants to live so badly she forgot she's dead."

Ava and Kaye used to be best friends. Until everything changed. The two friends were not only separated by not only two different worlds- a witch bound by duty and a vampire bound by " call It what you will, fate, destiny... - A horse." ( See what I did there tangled fans?) but by actual life and death. Can the two build a bridge to connect these two worlds? Or shall I say, can they see the light in a society that uses hatred as a fog? Scary and malicious until you cross and get to the other side.

If you find all these themes interesting then my I guess is this book is for you, and I recommend you pick it up. But I'm not here to discuss only ideas, I'm here to discuss the execution of said ideas as well. Following is my personal opinion, what I want and look for in a book and in no way shape or form Is my intention to discourage you from reading this book. This audiobook was provided to me by Netgalley and Dreamscape Media in exchange for an honest review! Many thanks to the publishers.

It was just trying to do too much. It was Vampire diaries mixed with first kill and twilight, with some Rapunzel themes involved. In my opinion, it had nothing going for it but vibes.

Sometimes one of the protagonists would have an epiphany about their beliefs and opinions starting to actually analyze them and question them, then next thing you know they're back like this whole act of thinking belonged to someone else entirely!
The characters felt two- dimensional. All we ever got about Kaye's past was that her mother was dead...And in a weird sense I felt like she was grieving her in everyone else's eyes other than her own? What I mean by this Is that death seemed like an excuse to everyone's actions but without necessarily having dealt with such grief or actually stop and feel it. Was she actually grieving her mother? because that's what it kept saying and yet not showing.
The end was unsatisfactory to say the least.
Ava was a mix of Bella with some nuances of Rapunzel and some sprinkles of a cliche ya protagonist. I just wish it would've done more. Especially from a such overused "genre" like vampires and witches. It relied too much on it being an inspiration of famous tales, series and stories that it forgot to bring it's own. Everything was so underdeveloped. Predictable. And calluna did never feel like a person that really existed. I guess in that sense it succeed in her being a memory but not actually empathizing with her or caring for Kaye's loss.

The only bonus for me was the queerness and the lack of the said word. Sexuality just existed and it didn't have to be analyzed or categorized.
The pace was satisfactory. The audiobook's narration was very pleasant.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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