A review by hotdogmother
Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb

4.0

I heard through the grapevine Seven Faceless Saints was a thrilling new YA fantasy and was most likely going to be picked for a book subscription box I like, so I dove right in. I also had it in my brain that it was a standalone novel. Towards the ending (the ending!!!) I realize... well, this definitely isn't a standalone. It's the opposite - the ending really gets you!!!

Saints employs the use of one of my peak favorite tropes, soft boy/angry stabby girl, and this one definitely lands well. Roz/Rossana is the bomb dot com and the kind of heroine we need in our lives. With that said, as much as I loved Roz and Damien, I still struggled with the multiple POVs. They're well done, and this is a mostly dual-POV novel with a few extras thrown in there, but still: a little bit of a struggle.

I had very few complaints beyond the dual POV (okay, maybe the war talk just a little boring - but that's EVERY war talk segment in EVERY book to me - truly personal...) and would really only caution you against this book if you don't like gore, murder, that kind of thing. The trigger warnings for this book are a mile long, so check the author's website for more there.

This is a really good YA fantasy novel, an excellent debut, and a fun series I will continue. My thanks to M.K. Lobb, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.