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aliceinbooks 's review for:
This Ravenous Fate
by Hayley Dennings
I'm a little unsure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I was really enjoying it for the most part, even if it took me a long time to get through it. On the other, by the time we got to the ending, there was so much happening in so little time and in such a confusing way that I finished the book completely dumbfounded.
So, here's a little breakdown of my thoughts:
I enjoyed the main characters and their friends to enemies to lovers slow-burn romance. Even though we still didn't get much on the romance front (points for the slow-burn, because we're all tired of "enemies" that stop the hate part at the 25% mark of a book), I enjoyed what we got. There was real hurt and yearning and complicated feelings between Layla and Elise, and it was the high point of the book for me. The pain of a broken friendship, the tension from being on opposite sides of the reaper-hunter war, the years of suppressed feelings coming to play... It was good. We love some sapphic yearning mixed with Jazz Age Harlem vampires, we need more of that.
The other characters... Well. So, everyone apart from our main characters sucks. That's fine. It's not usually a problem for me, I get that we're looking at a world where everything and everyone is corrupted and twisted in some way. Except for the fact that all these other horrible characters weren't that complex or well-developed, they just sucked. Besides, the other people that don't completely suck also so there was no escape. In some ways, it was interesting, because Layla and Elise are also not exactly good people, right? But by the time I didn't get it. Which leads me to:
The plot was slightly convoluted to the point where the ending was just plain confusing. I'm telling you, I was okay with everything that was happening, with the many players on the board, with the shifting alliances, with the characters constantly being offed when I started getting attached. It was fine for most of it. Until we got to the last 20% stretch where everything started happening at the same time. I stopped following, I'm so sorry. It was so mind-boggling, I read those last chapters with my brain only being able to produce question marks. There were so many confrontations that didn't seem to lead anywhere, I'm curious if I'm the only one that felt this way (please let me know if you also couldn't keep up), but this is what brought the rating down for me. I won't give spoilers, obviously, but like... What?
So, here's a little breakdown of my thoughts:
I enjoyed the main characters and their friends to enemies to lovers slow-burn romance. Even though we still didn't get much on the romance front (points for the slow-burn, because we're all tired of "enemies" that stop the hate part at the 25% mark of a book), I enjoyed what we got. There was real hurt and yearning and complicated feelings between Layla and Elise, and it was the high point of the book for me. The pain of a broken friendship, the tension from being on opposite sides of the reaper-hunter war, the years of suppressed feelings coming to play... It was good. We love some sapphic yearning mixed with Jazz Age Harlem vampires, we need more of that.
The other characters... Well. So, everyone apart from our main characters sucks. That's fine. It's not usually a problem for me, I get that we're looking at a world where everything and everyone is corrupted and twisted in some way. Except for the fact that all these other horrible characters weren't that complex or well-developed, they just sucked. Besides, the other people that don't completely suck also
Spoiler
died horrible deathsSpoiler
Elise injected Sterling (aka her former best friend) with a venom that I'm pretty sure she didn't know exactly how it worked, only that it KILLED people, and led him on a murderous spree of all the other reapers (who I'm guessing you wouldn't call innocent but who are also not guilty of anything), I was just asking myself if not being exactly good people meant being downright evil. Except, this is never quite questioned by anyone as a bad choice, or an evil one, even thought for me it was the worst thing she did in the entire book. It was horrible andThe plot was slightly convoluted to the point where the ending was just plain confusing. I'm telling you, I was okay with everything that was happening, with the many players on the board, with the shifting alliances, with the characters constantly being offed when I started getting attached. It was fine for most of it. Until we got to the last 20% stretch where everything started happening at the same time. I stopped following, I'm so sorry. It was so mind-boggling, I read those last chapters with my brain only being able to produce question marks. There were so many confrontations that didn't seem to lead anywhere,