A review by silver_valkyrie_reads
Odriel's Heirs by Hayley Reese Chow

4.0

Overall, I enjoyed this one. There were stretches toward the beginning where I wasn't very engaged with the story, even though I liked the idea of it--to be honest, it was really when the thread of romantic sub-plot showed up that I finally got super invested in the story. ;-)

Other than the slow bits (not really slow, just... not grabbing my interest?) and the bit where she gets life advice that ties everything together for her, that felt a bit cheesy to me, it was a really solid fantasy adventure with zombie raising bad guys and good guys with magical super powers, and a low-key (aka, sometimes you have to go save the world even when you're having emotions) but genuine feeling romance. (Because this is an ARC I didn't take the occasional proofreading errors into account in my rating--hopefully those will be long gone by the time most of you read this book.)

I would definitely like to read the sequel to this one!

Content is very reasonable for the intended age group, though I probably wouldn't recommend it for younger advanced readers for a few reasons: First, no one wants to explain the phrase 'orgiastic fury' to a small child. Second, there are some tense, gross and very sad bits including deaths (both on a broad scale and a very personal level), description of the injuries after torture, an emotional animal goodbye, and rotting flesh and such on zombies. There are also a couple of kisses, one of which briefly gets into descriptions of tongue and lips and all that.

Thanks to the author for providing a digital copy of the ARC in exchange for my honest review!