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A review by laelyn
The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino
2.0
I rarely read young adult horror, so I was actually rather excited to dive into this one. "The Devil Makes Three" mixes paranormal horror with a dark academia-esque setting which I really liked. In the end, it still just wasn't for me.
The writing is solid and the characters are complex and well-written, too. Personally, I thought they read a little older than they are supposed to be, especially Elliot, and in general the setting screamed more college than high school to me. I think the book would have benefitted from ageing up the characters a little for the whole setting to make more sense, but this is a very minor complaint and I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Also, the whole magic thing felt out of place and weirdly tacked on, like the author was trying to write two different books at the same time. I really didn't need it in this particular novel.
The biggest issue I had with the novel was the pacing. I gotta admit that I thought about dnf-ing the book multiple times throughout the first about 30% of it because it was sooooo sloooow and nothing really happened. I was incredibly bored despite the book obviously trying to set up its later action by making me care for the characters, by building context for them, by fleshing them out. But it was just a lot of tell don't show and it dragged on and on and on until finally, things started to get moving once Tess and Elliot find the demonic book. The pacing was still too slow after that but at least there were actual things happening, and some of them were very dark and gruesome which I absolutely enjoyed.
The characters themselves were alright. I admire the complexity Bovalino gives them but there were also weird disconnects between the pov chapters that kept creeping up. Elliot would, in his own pov chapter, talk at length about how he would never make a move on Tess for several reasons, then in the next chapter, this time Tess' pov, he immediately asks her out. What the characters tell us in their pov chapters stands sometimes in opposition to what they do in the other character's chapters or at least doesn't always fit. The romance felt at the same time rushed and incredibly slow. The side characters were kind of... there, but really, none of them were particularly fleshed out, which in some cases kept me from emotionally engaging with certain parts of the plot.
The final twist is rather typical of the horror genre so I predicted it and I'm sure a lot of readers will too, but I still really liked it and it added to the eerie atmosphere of the second part of the book. The devil itself was really well done and I really enjoyed the ink-angle, but it couldn't save the book for me. I'd still recommend it to fans of the ya horror genre.
Many thanks to Titan Books and Netgalley for the arc!
The writing is solid and the characters are complex and well-written, too. Personally, I thought they read a little older than they are supposed to be, especially Elliot, and in general the setting screamed more college than high school to me. I think the book would have benefitted from ageing up the characters a little for the whole setting to make more sense, but this is a very minor complaint and I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Also, the whole magic thing felt out of place and weirdly tacked on, like the author was trying to write two different books at the same time. I really didn't need it in this particular novel.
The biggest issue I had with the novel was the pacing. I gotta admit that I thought about dnf-ing the book multiple times throughout the first about 30% of it because it was sooooo sloooow and nothing really happened. I was incredibly bored despite the book obviously trying to set up its later action by making me care for the characters, by building context for them, by fleshing them out. But it was just a lot of tell don't show and it dragged on and on and on until finally, things started to get moving once Tess and Elliot find the demonic book. The pacing was still too slow after that but at least there were actual things happening, and some of them were very dark and gruesome which I absolutely enjoyed.
The characters themselves were alright. I admire the complexity Bovalino gives them but there were also weird disconnects between the pov chapters that kept creeping up. Elliot would, in his own pov chapter, talk at length about how he would never make a move on Tess for several reasons, then in the next chapter, this time Tess' pov, he immediately asks her out. What the characters tell us in their pov chapters stands sometimes in opposition to what they do in the other character's chapters or at least doesn't always fit. The romance felt at the same time rushed and incredibly slow. The side characters were kind of... there, but really, none of them were particularly fleshed out, which in some cases kept me from emotionally engaging with certain parts of the plot.
The final twist is rather typical of the horror genre so I predicted it and I'm sure a lot of readers will too, but I still really liked it and it added to the eerie atmosphere of the second part of the book. The devil itself was really well done and I really enjoyed the ink-angle, but it couldn't save the book for me. I'd still recommend it to fans of the ya horror genre.
Many thanks to Titan Books and Netgalley for the arc!