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ezwolf's review
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Blood, Death, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Physical abuse, Gaslighting, Confinement, Murder, Torture, and Racism
Minor: Animal death, Vomit, Death of parent, and Child death
centrifugepolitics's review
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 thatwitches 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.
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
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.
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
Graphic: Death, Blood, Death of parent, and Animal death
Moderate: Violence and Emotional abuse
bookstarbri's review
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!
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.
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!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
Minor: Vomit
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