I love the new ways that vampires and witches were portrayed and the lore that tied the two together.

3.5. I did enjoy this. My primary complaint is that the characters were a little flat. Stunning cover. Not an academic level review, but there you have it.

A story of two young witches in love and discovering they can’t trust the world

Ava was turned into a vampire without her consent, all a part of larger plot to change who in the world has power (mortals & witches or vampires).

Kay is a fire witch who thinks her best friend Ava killed her mom and disappeared.

For reasons, they stumble back together venturing through the ailing wilderness on a quest to find essentially the tree of life. Drama and death and betrayal ensues.

The plot felt a bit simplistic even with all the twists and turns of actions: vampires are created from the power of witches who got their powers from the old gods.

Ava ends up becoming the new vampire queen. Kay also becomes a vampire out of a need to stay alive. The two escape the clutches of the resident bad guy (satiating!) and now we all await book two for these two to finally change the world for the better through their love and dedication to goodness.

Review coming soon.

I have mixed feelings about this book, which is why I've given it a three star rating.

I grabbed this book from my library because of the synopsis on the book and the cover, it truly is a gorgeous piece of art. I was so intrigued by the plot idea but I feel like it was a bit flat. I didn't learn much about the world overall, didn't really feel like I understood much about how the system worked, and that frustrated me. The characters also were a bit one-dimensional and I felt like some of them, Tristan mostly, had the biggest 180 without a really great explanation.

Overall, I think this book had a lot of potential. I am pretty sure this is a standalone, but if there was a sequel I would pick it up because its entirely possible that sequel would help answer a lot of questions and make the duology/trilogy/series whatever it became a bit more rounded and a higher ranking series.

Thanks but no thanks. I’ll just pretend I never read this.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an opportunity to read an ARC of this book. I was pumped for this one but I had to force myself to finish it. I feel like I had high hopes once Ava escaped but then it was just her and Kaye wandering through the forest for multiple chapters and nothing happens. I didnt feel an attachment to either main character and ultimately had trouble with the fact that every single parent figure in the book was an absolute shit. Zenos was yucky to say the least. Overall, did not love it.

This was an absolutely fantastic read. The setting and worldbuilding were so visual and stunning, the magic system was both complex but still explained in such an easy to comprehend way. I really liked the characters and found them to be intriguing and complex with dynamic and interesting motivations. The plot had so many elements that I loved, but more than anything it was a story that transcended so many traditional tropes and was more than a love story. All of the elements to a romance were there, but it was made even more brilliant that it was more about the connections they characters made along their journey than about the lovey dovey parts of the story. I thought this was pure magnificence.

3.5 stars