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refrejarator's review against another edition
- 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
3.0
Moderate: Racism, War, Bullying, Torture, Confinement, Grief, Emotional abuse, Blood, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Child abuse, Death of parent, Animal death, Death, and Fire/Fire injury
shelbyslifer's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Blood, Death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, and Gaslighting
micaelacccc's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Gaslighting, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Violence, Child abuse, Physical abuse, and Blood
Moderate: Death, Animal death, Death of parent, Torture, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Murder
myplaincheerios's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Moderate: Gore, Confinement, and Emotional abuse
vixenreader's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, Body horror, Gaslighting, Forced institutionalization, Child abuse, Confinement, Violence, Grief, Abandonment, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Animal death, Medical trauma, Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, Medical content, Sexism, Fire/Fire injury, Bullying, Cannibalism, Gore, and Kidnapping
Minor: Slavery, Ableism, and War
There is also destruction of nature, people being chained and imprisoned, and abusive mother-daughter dynamics.anastasia_raf's review against another edition
- 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
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 pace was satisfactory. The audiobook's narration was very pleasant.
Graphic: Grief, Murder, Emotional abuse, Violence, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Kidnapping
taelights's review against another edition
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.
Graphic: Blood, Animal death, Child abuse, Confinement, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death, Emotional abuse, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Antisemitism
atthelibrarywithmegan's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Blood, Confinement, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Physical abuse
ezwolf's review against another edition
- 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
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.
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 against another edition
- 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
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.
Graphic: Death, Blood, Death of parent, and Animal death
Moderate: Violence and Emotional abuse