A review by bioteacherbooknerd
A Cruel Thirst by Angela Montoya

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

To start off, the imagery created in this story was amazing & I absolutely loved the unique premise of a vampire who hates drinking blood. The banter between Lalo & Carolina was spot on. I so enjoyed their conversations & found myself laughing often throughout this book. I also got so attached to them both because they were written so well. I found myself in tears & genuinely rooting for them in different situations. The fact that I got so caught up in the story just shows how incredible the writing was. Both characters went through a lot of great individual character development as well as development of their bond, & I enjoyed both of those pieces tremendously. Another element I found super well done was the unique mythology used in this book to explain the existence of vampires. This is definitely a take I haven’t seen done before & it was executed so well. Lastly, I thought the intermixing of artifacts throughout the chapters that related to the history of vampires was a nice touch. It is mentioned that Lalo has been studying vampires, but this was a really fun way to see information, & also allowed for key pieces of information to be revealed at the right times. Along with the artifacts, Angela did a great job with pacing in this book. I loved how she was able to structure the story so that the length of chapters actually kind of coincided with the pacing of the plot. I could talk all day about how much I loved this. I can’t wait to scream to the internet about this more as the publish date gets closer.