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maeverose 's review for:
The Deathless Girls
by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
If you’re familiar at all with Dracula and his ‘brides’, then you kind of know how the book is going to end, but this story is very bleak. And unfortunately, also kind of meh. Not a lot happens in the middle. The pacing of the story could’ve been better. It reads fast but at the same time not. About 60% is spent in a random boyar’s castle before they even get to Dracul’s castle. The last third was the most similar to what I expected this book to be, and the last 10% felt very quickly wrapped up. It seemed like a strange jump from the Lil and Kizzy we see in most of the book, to the epilogue.
But all in all, I’m just glad I didn’t hate the book (as I almost always do with YA fantasy), because now I get to keep the physical copy without feeling bad about it 😆. This is the most beautiful book cover I own.
I will add that I’m unsure of the author’s identity and whether or not she had Romani sensitivity readers for this book. We’re following two Romani sisters, and Romani slurs are used throughout, and there’s a lot of violence in general towards Romani people (called ‘Travellers’ in the book), and depictions of some of their spiritual practices. I’m not Romani myself, so I don’t know if these are things they actually practice or believe or if they were just made up for the story. That also means I can’t fairly judge if the representation was done well.
Some other minor notes:
This has the beautiful + plain twins trope, which I’m personally kind of annoyed by.
I really don’t like the nicknames, I wish they’d just gone with their full names. They feel too modern. Idk they bother me.
But all in all, I’m just glad I didn’t hate the book (as I almost always do with YA fantasy), because now I get to keep the physical copy without feeling bad about it 😆. This is the most beautiful book cover I own.
I will add that I’m unsure of the author’s identity and whether or not she had Romani sensitivity readers for this book. We’re following two Romani sisters, and Romani slurs are used throughout, and there’s a lot of violence in general towards Romani people (called ‘Travellers’ in the book), and depictions of some of their spiritual practices. I’m not Romani myself, so I don’t know if these are things they actually practice or believe or if they were just made up for the story. That also means I can’t fairly judge if the representation was done well.
Some other minor notes:
This has the beautiful + plain twins trope, which I’m personally kind of annoyed by.
I really don’t like the nicknames, I wish they’d just gone with their full names. They feel too modern. Idk they bother me.
Some of the dialogue is very modern
There is about two pages of a misunderstanding trope but thankfully it gets squashed right away. Still annoying though.
There is about two pages of a misunderstanding trope but thankfully it gets squashed right away. Still annoying though.
The vampires in this sparkle….
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child death, Confinement, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Fatphobia, Genocide, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Lesbophobia, Injury/Injury detail
The g slur for Romani people is used frequently throughout, always in a way that acknowledges it is offensive