A review by atlastheninth
Fallen Thorns by Harvey Oliver Baxter

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Thanks to the author for an ARC! 

There are some mild spoilers in here. 
 
First of all the story: Great. 
There’s the main story: Arlo turns into a vampire, makes new friends and a villain that tries to do them harm. Classic, cool story and lovable characters but nothing too special here. 
Then there’s the secondary story that is parallel to the first (I don't know how to better describe it): something is after Arlo, trying to take over. And damn that’s cool. Now I won’t go into much detail here because the less you know the better but it is the reason Arlo is an unreliable narrator. Personally I haven’t read anything like it yet and it was so cool. A bit confusing at points but I’m into that. 
Maybe also note that this is the first book in a series and there is a bit of a cliffhanger at the end. 
 
Now the characters: Pretty much everyone is queer, love that. But most importantly our MC Arlo is aroace, which he partially figures out during the book. I could relate to him so much, it's ridiculous. Knowing you don't want any of that but believing that you should want these things, that you're broken for not feeling any of it. And forcing yourself to do things and thinking you're a bad person for /leading/ others on even though you're not doing anything wrong. And being so incredibly relieved when it finally clicks: there is nothing wrong with you and you're not alone. Yeah, that broke me a bit. 
 
"I'm not like that. I didn't have needs. I'm just me. A little bit broken." 
 
Lastly the writing: The more I think about it, the more impressed I am. About half way through the book I noticed that I was starting to feel a bit disconnected to Arlo and the others but this went hand in hand with the something slowly taking over Arlo. And that something does not care about the other characters. So looking back at it this was really impressive. However while I was reading it I didn't really grasp what was going on there so it felt more like the writing suddenly went a bit downhill. There were some other things that felt weirdly written but looking back were good. I don't really know what to do with that. 
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