Reviews

Відьма і вампірка by Francesca Flores

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sjlind2002's review against another edition

3.0

Thank you to the publishers for giving me an arc to read and provide an early review.

This book was solid. It was a quick read and a fun one with a really awesome concept. Rapunzel is one of my favorite stories so I was very intrigued by the idea of this book especially when there were vampires involved.

Concept wise I was really excited but I felt like the execution made me feel a bit lukewarm. I enjoyed the story and flew through the book yet I wanted a bit more from a few key aspects. One being the world building and another being the back work that would have built up characters relationships to each other. These things just felt a bit lacking and I wanted to know more or become more acquainted with their past experiences. That is not to say I didn’t like the characters. Ava and Kaye were strong on their own and I feel like I understood them well. Their relationships to others though, other than the villains, were weaker because they lacked some background.

Overall I’m very happy to have had the chance to read this book early because it was part of my most anticipated for 2023, even if it was not perfect.

mchyrklund's review against another edition

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2.0

I was really excited about the concept of this book but OOF it was rough to get through. The plot was surface level at best, and the dialog and relationship felt super forced. I did listen to this book in audiobook format, so it's possible the style of narration added to that overall forced vibe, but either way the story and characters lacked depth and relatability. I really wanted to like it so I listened to the whole book, but continued to be pretty disappointed throughout.

literaryluxe's review against another edition

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3.0

This book has witches and vampires which has always made for a fantastic duo. There is also some mama drama in the book as well and it is a sapphic rapunzel retelling. Sounds like a very promising book and it really could have been! I think we a few revisions before publication if possible would fix some of the issues to make this a truly incredible read.

One of the things I found sad was the lack of character development. I was looking for really complex characters in this book, especially with the background but we didn't get that. And of course with witches and vampires there should always be a level of unpredictability and moral greyness; like you never know what they may do sort of thing or what their motives are. It would have made things a little bit tenser in the story. The writing overall could use some additional details whilst removing details that don't really help push the story forward. Like how old are the characters for example? Maybe cutting down on other parts of the story or using some parts to incorporate ages would have been a good idea.

As I mentioned, I think overall this is a very promising read but it does need a little revision in some areas to make it a more well-rounded book.