A review by kelforrest
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have pretty complicated feelings about the book that I probably won't be able to go over in one comment's worth of review, but I'll try my best.

Before I start, this book is often compared so Six of Crows and I'll also be making some comparisons here and there, because I actually like this more than SoC. I still didn't rate it super high but SoC I only rated 2 stars because it was massively disappointing to me and I found it really boring, and a lot of the characters were overly gritty for teenagers - see my SoC review for more info on that, it's an oldie but it's fine. Anyway, just thought I'd mention.

Plot:
The pacing was really good, it started off quite slow but the action was really quick and I think it balanced that well. I will say there are a lot of chapters, as each one is a different POV, but I wish they'd maybe been a bit longer since there ended up being about 56 by the end with about 35 of them being in the second half, meaning the chapters never ended on anything particularly meaningful. I really like the concept of Spindrift being a tearoom by day and vampire sort of "bar" by night, I think that's a fun idea. Most of the plot wasn't particularly unique, but it was fun and I can't really say much beyond that. I did like the comments on colonialism and racism, though found it to be slightly hypocritical at times without making a commentary on said hypocrisy (
i.e. Flick and Arthie talking about how the first thing people notice about them is their skin, when earlier one of her first realisations about Laith was him distinctly having an accent unlike the others in Ettenia
) which I feel worked against the overall message. The heist was fun and high-action and I definitely
felt bad for Laith when Arthie betrayed him
, and its placement in the story made it a good way to keep me invested. There maybe wasn't a much vampire lore scattered through as I wanted, there was some before the heist with Matteo and loads just dumped on us near the end, but the book could've had nothing to do with vampires and just be any creature and feel essentially the same, and what we did get wasn't super unique. The chapters
about the fire
were genuinely heartbreaking and really good character moments, as well as drawing in themes from the rest of the book like trauma and family and belonging which I though was very impactful. Towards the end the book definitely became more and more what I'd wanted it to be at the beginning. I sort of wish the book wasn't classified as YA, since a lot of it is really gritty and feels like it wants to lean into the more sexual parts of vampirism as well as the blood and gore, along with difficult themes of trauma, and while it's definitely at the older end of YA and YA can definitely do dark themes I do still think it could've done more with its themes if it was adult. While the characters really do work as young adults themselves, and I'm not having the Six of Crows issue where they feel overly gritty for their ages, I think I would've liked to see what it would've done with an older rating - even though I'm not a massive gritty sexual stories person, it maybe could've worked in this one's favour. 

The Group:
The group dynamic made it somewhat difficult to fully connect to the characters' relationships. Like, they so clearly wanted to betray each other that it made it really difficult to care what happened.
Laith left them, okay.... nobody wanted him around anyway and they glossed over it really fast
so why should I care? Conceptually a team who hate each other is really fun, I just think they still need to have a clear reason to care for each other as well as have their own reasons for betrayal, or I just won't care.

Writing:
I wasn't a fan of all the "British-isms" - the characters are clearly inspired by British media like Peaky Blinders but as with most Americans writing Brits a lot of words were used contextually wrong in a way that may have felt hot or British to an American, but to me, a North Yorkshire half-Welsh Brit, it read unbelievably janky and threw me off every time a character insisted on calling Flick "Miss Felicity" or said "love". At the start it also felt horribly overwritten. It would have a pretty good flow then interrupt it with a really flowery quote that was a totally different style of writing. But I feel like it ultimately found an amazing rhythm and the writing, while not very unique, was a great vessel for the story it was carrying.

Romance:
I don't care for the romance, and really don't feel any chemistry between the characters beyond what could be platonic. The only character I believe when he flirts is Matteo because I think he just wants to smash everyone at all times. Flick and Jin feel incredibly forced, and in a mission so important and potentially life-changing their constant back-and-forth flirting (fine if they're dating and they move on fast, not fine if it makes them stand there for 5 minutes blushing) when they're meant to be helping out just seems like a roadblock, which sounds really mean but this mission could kill everyone - just shut up about your crush for one minute!!! It also felt like it totally clouded any possibility of betrayal, quashed any chance of Flick being interesting and actually morally grey, and just emphasised the main character syndrome the main 3 seem to have. I find Arthie's romantic tension with Laith slightly more believable since they're both down-to-earth about their situation, the possibility of betrayal, and are ready to abandon ship if need be, and I'm actually pretty excited to see where their relationship goes. The whole part with
Arthie discovering she was a half-vampire
was incredible in my opinion, but the highlight was
her time saying "goodbye" to Laith (he came back at the end, which is why there's quotations)
and the whole thing there felt like a great way of representing their love-hate relationship in a really visceral way that I heavily relate to in a traumatic sense and I think it goes to show how similar they are in terms of their trauma - the whole
wanting to rip his ribcage open and crawl inside him
bit hit pretty close to home in terms of it being a way that I and a few others with trauma relating to relationships often view love, which is actually where I think an adult rating would've been necessary to amplify what was obvious meant to be quite a sexually charged moment.

Arthie:
I found she was quite a dark horse sort of protagonist, which isn't really my thing but as time passed I grew to like her more, and she definitely wasn't as gritty as a lot of SoC characters which I liked. I also really liked how she ended up sort of
guiding Flick despite not liking her too much at the start, and ended up inspiring her to be less naïve
. I remember a conversation she had with Laith where he was
sharing his trauma, and when she was right about something she felt like she had to hold back a smile
, and stuff like that made me slightly angry since, despite her own trauma, she seemed to really just not care about anyone she viewed as less than her as she viewed Laith at the time. I fluctuate so hard between being a massive Arthie defender and her biggest critic. Her and Jin both sort of have a tendency to just randomly threaten people as an automatic response to being suspicious of them, and don't get me wrong, I love headstrong characters and characters who are mean due to trauma (or even just for no reason, I love me a petty little so-and-so) and choose to be defensive, but it's a difficult line to walk between rightful anger at the right people or a mean character with redeemable qualities, and a hypocrite who can't take what they dish out, which can often be where those two fall.

Jin:
I started off a massive fan of Jin, and loved his silliness, but I feel like we lost a lot of that in most of the book due to the relationship between him and Flick feeling a bit all-consuming, and his silliness being dropped for flirtatiousness. He also became quite a bit meaner to Arthie later on which made me so angry since it was really out-of-character and only really seemed to come about when he was around Flick, which made me honestly really stand behind Arthie in her dislike for the pair. At one point, though,
Jin hit a guy with an auction paddle
and said something I found quite funny, so he had his moments of Jin-ness which I loved!!

Flick:
Flick as a character felt really bland. She was too posh for me, and her non-posh aspects felt very forced and not-like-other-rich-people. It felt like she was trying too hard to be just like everyone else, and idk if I'm just a cynical working class person but that whole vibe just makes her difficult to relate to on any level. She seems to get special treatment just because
she never ACTUALLY betrays them (despite wanting to the whole time)
and because Jin fancies her (if it was Arthie with the romance with her, we would never get that special treatment). It peeves me off because
she's just as traitorous as everyone in that group
- which is fine, it's just the hypocrisy again in how we're meant to view her as more morally right than Laith and Matteo, or even Arthie, just because
she never actually goes through with anything
which makes me so upset!!!

Laith:
Laith as a character is one of my favourites, but I'm pretty sad we didn't get a huge number of answers for him in this book or much of his POV if any, especially since the author is clearly capable of writing mysterious characters who we still get the POV of. Laith and Arthie are pretty similar as people but I feel like the only thing driving me to prefer Arthie is that we know what she's experiencing more due to her POV being very prominent, and I wish we didn't have to rely on that to make Laith seem
"more evil"
. Again, there's an element of hypocrisy in painting the exact same actions as good or bad just because
one's a protagonist and one's not
. He seemed to be the most genuine character for me, even after
"lying" to the whole group
I fully think he wasn't really trying all that hard, and his feelings about everything from his sister to Arthie were fully real. I found him one of the most sympathetic, despite understanding his views were flawed (i.e. the whole sister situation), because I could see where he was coming from fully.

Matteo:
My favourite character in the whole book!! He was just a load of fun and gave the book it's best vampire qualities. He sort of felt like Astarion from Baldur's Gate III and was the only character who felt right being so posh because the book leans into it - he IS like other rich people and I'm here for it, own it bbg. I wish we had some of the book from his perspective, even though everyone calls him a main character he really seems to be forgotten about which is annoying. I hope he shows up more in the next one since
he was revealed as the Wolf of White Roaring
(I didn't actually pick up on this first time around as I didn't find it super clear), which is something I'm looking forward to. I actually love him to little tiny bits and pieces you don't understand.

Also, wtf happened to the cat?
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