Francesca Flores

Ava and Kaye used to be best friends. Until one night two years ago, vampires broke through the magical barrier protecting their town, and in the ensuing attack, Kaye’s mother was killed, and Ava was turned into a vampire. Since then, Ava has been trapped in her house. Her mother Eugenia needs her: Ava still has her witch powers, and Eugenia must take them in order to hide that she's a vampire as well. Desperate to escape her confinement and stop her mother's plans to destroy the town, Ava must break out, flee to the forest, and seek help from the vampires who live there. When there is another attack, she sees her opportunity and escapes.

Kaye, now at the end of her training as a Flame witch, is ready to fulfill her duty of killing any vampires that threaten the town, including Ava. On the night that Ava escapes, Kaye follows her and convinces her to travel together into the forest, while secretly planning to turn her in. Ava agrees, hoping to rekindle their old friendship, and the romantic feelings she'd started to have for Kaye before that terrible night.

But with monstrous trees that devour humans whole, vampires who attack from above, and Ava’s stepfather tracking her, the woods are full of danger. As they travel deeper into the forest, Kaye questions everything she thought she knew. The two are each other's greatest threat―and also their only hope, if they want to make it through the forest unscathed.

The Witch and the Vampire

Megan

3.5 Stars 

I was super excited about this book. Vampires, witches, and sapphic romance? Count me in! For the first half of the book, I was sold—ready to give it five stars. Unfortunately, the story kind of lost its footing halfway through. The end was really messy and confusing with the same information repeated over and over again. 

If the same energy had carried throughout the entire novel, I’d be a lot more psyched. The romance wasn’t satisfying when it reached its peak, and the villains were completely evil with nothing likable about them. I much prefer a villain I love to hate. 

Overall, this was a very quick read with some fun and interesting elements, but ended up being pretty predictable and unsatisfying toward the end. Would make for a good beach read. 

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Wednesday Books for giving me this ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

this was... okay. i loved the ending and the character development and kayeava were cute in the end. but i feel like the push and pull of "oh i'm a vampire, i'm a monster" and "i might be human after all" got old. i don't really like the "woe be me, i'm a powerful supernatural creature but i'd rather be human" trope. so. the writing style was also unemotional—

spoiler -
when tristan died, i felt nothing. when kaye killed liander, which was supposed to be a major climax point, i felt nothing. i barely even realized that casiopea left her powers to ava. that whole exchange felt muted.
- end spoiler

so 2.85 stars overall. not bad really, just not one of my more interesting reads this year.

Fey Reid

3.25 ✨️
Genre:
•Young Adult
•Romance
•Fantasy

Trigger Warning:
•Abuse (manipulation, physically imprisoned, death)

The title, cover and blurb intruged me but...
I liked the plot but the excution of it was lacking, kinda dry. Magic system was underdeveloped. There was a lot of telling and not enough showing. The ending had me honestly confused.

This wasn't my cup of tea but I'm pretty sure it is someone else's.

this was an impulse purchase i saw someone reselling on pango so i’m glad i picked it up. it was an easy read and perfect to wrap up pride month with. who doesn’t love a queer rapunzel retelling with vampires?

samantha lias

gay vampires ✅

gay witches ✅

magical trees ✅

parental trauma ✅

this was an impulse purchase i saw someone reselling on pango so i’m glad i picked it up. it was an easy read and perfect to wrap up pride month with. who doesn’t love a queer rapunzel retelling with vampires?

thank you to wednesday books, st. martin’s press, and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

buckle up folks because i’ve got a rant coming for y’all.

let’s start off with the main thing that made me worried about reading this book in the first place. the concern over the vampire story relying/mirroring too heavily on blood libel. i’m not going to go into the specifics on what blood libel is or exactly how it impacts my community, the jewish community. but, this was brought up as a potential worry by non-jewish reviewers. and i’d have to say, i definitely agree with their worry. now, i doubt the author probably knows much or even realized how much their story parallels with it, but let’s get into it. i think the most obvious note that stuck out to me in terms of the vampires, was that they were genuinely called blood beasts with pure hatred by humans and witches. not excluding our MAIN CHARACTER for a decent portion of the book. (she said it with chutzpah. it was truly some deep rooted hatred that she harbored.) but more than that, they’re locked out of society by a 

wall. they’re called lifeless, soulless, monsters. they’re hunted by witches and humans. they’re seen as irredeemable and othered. see the picture i’m painting? so yeah, i’d say that borders just a tad too close to blood libel for my liking.

but okay, let’s ignore that for now, there’s still a ton of other things that just fell right through the cracks with the world-building. starting with ava and her mother. ava was turned by her mother, our supposed mother gothel figure (although the similarities to rapunzel are sparing), eugenia. a big part of the lore is that only those who have the same witch affinity could borrow/steal powers from someone younger than them. additionally, witches in their late teen years are at their strongest and essentially need their powers siphoned off so they can control it? or do they? because the only one that happens to is ava. sure, fine. all is dandy. except wait no, it’s not. because the other big part of the lore is that only witches who are turned into vampires as teens can retain their powers. so shouldn’t eugenia have NO power. how is she conveniently able to steal her daughters powers when she’s an adult vampire. don’t you think that would mean OTHER witches turned vampires would do that to young witches. and yet, we only ever see ava’s mother do it. make it make sense.

now not only that, but WHAT is the witches magic system. time and again we’re told that there are witches with different affinities. but how many? we have nine clarity members, but then also two of them were flame witches, so are there only eight types? we only ever see flame and root witches in action, and are told of only one more type. do these other type of witches not care? and where are they? what’s the purpose of mentioning them then? it’s just so many little things like that that make the details fall through.

anyway, we’ve spoken about the witches lore, let’s move onto the vampire lore. so, vampires have to feast every few days. if they don’t they’ll become more aggressive, more erratic in their need for blood, right? why doesn’t this rule apply to ava? time and again at the beginning of the book we’re told that she was fed a lot more often, making her even more reliant on having a steady source of blood flow. sure ava doesn’t want to kill people, fine whatever. but she still needs to feast in 

way. why is it after one or two mentions the first day in the woods about her thirst, it’s pretty never brought up again. all of the sudden, she’s fine. she can just be stronger than needing blood like she used to a DAY ago. no hunger, no desperate desires. yep, that adds up. she does eventually get blood periodically through the events (although i’m still not quite sure how many days pass during the book events). but it seems like it should have a bit more grip on her. but nope, ava is just that willfully strong that she can just say no. idk y’all… like, am i missing something here?

but okay, lets move away from any more of the world building. we’ve established pretty well how i feel about all that. let’s move onto our main girls ava and kaye. oh... yeah, and some tristan dude i guess. i’m sorry but you could’ve removed tristan from the story and it would’ve turned out the exact same. like the poor boy had the personality of cardboard and was literally there just a character to be there when kaye or ava needed an extra pair of hands. but enough about him. let’s talk about the girls. i just did not believe their love story, their chemistry. it was a pretty big case of “i can change them for the better”. ava was this pure, understanding person who wanted everyone to have their own better lives. (i mean until she totally wasn’t anymore, but that’s neither here nor there, i’m not really surprised with her arc). but kaye? kaye deeply hated vampires and especially ava, who she somehow thought killed her mother. that was all overturned for their “budding” relationship after a couple days together. we’d be told that they have this massive friendship through flashbacks. that they have very important, sentimental items (like scarves that are only mentioned TWICE). but in the present? i don’t see it.

there’s so much more unexplained things about the book that i could get into. the glowing lake, the forest swallowing the people, the arkana speaking to ava (why though?), the writing, the pacing and order of the chapters. but we’d genuinely be here all day. and i don’t want to think about this book anymore right now. it took me over two weeks to finish a book that usually only take me a few days. i’m exhausted by this world. so that's it, goodbye.

ash (smokedshelves)

thank you to wednesday books, st. martin’s press, and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

buckle up folks because i’ve got a rant coming for y’all.

let’s start off with the main thing that made me worried about reading this book in the first place. the concern over the vampire story relying/mirroring too heavily on blood libel. i’m not going to go into the specifics on what blood libel is or exactly how it impacts my community, the jewish community. but, this was brought up as a potential worry by non-jewish reviewers. and i’d have to say, i definitely agree with their worry. now, i doubt the author probably knows much or even realized how much their story parallels with it, but let’s get into it. i think the most obvious note that stuck out to me in terms of the vampires, was that they were genuinely called blood beasts with pure hatred by humans and witches. not excluding our MAIN CHARACTER for a decent portion of the book. (she said it with chutzpah. it was truly some deep rooted hatred that she harbored.) but more than that, they’re locked out of society by a literal wall. they’re called lifeless, soulless, monsters. they’re hunted by witches and humans. they’re seen as irredeemable and othered. see the picture i’m painting? so yeah, i’d say that borders just a tad too close to blood libel for my liking.

but okay, let’s ignore that for now, there’s still a ton of other things that just fell right through the cracks with the world-building. starting with ava and her mother. ava was turned by her mother, our supposed mother gothel figure (although the similarities to rapunzel are sparing), eugenia. a big part of the lore is that only those who have the same witch affinity could borrow/steal powers from someone younger than them. additionally, witches in their late teen years are at their strongest and essentially need their powers siphoned off so they can control it? or do they? because the only one that happens to is ava. sure, fine. all is dandy. except wait no, it’s not. because the other big part of the lore is that only witches who are turned into vampires as teens can retain their powers. so shouldn’t eugenia have NO power. how is she conveniently able to steal her daughters powers when she’s an adult vampire. don’t you think that would mean OTHER witches turned vampires would do that to young witches. and yet, we only ever see ava’s mother do it. make it make sense.

now not only that, but WHAT is the witches magic system. time and again we’re told that there are witches with different affinities. but how many? we have nine clarity members, but then also two of them were flame witches, so are there only eight types? we only ever see flame and root witches in action, and are told of only one more type. do these other type of witches not care? and where are they? what’s the purpose of mentioning them then? it’s just so many little things like that that make the details fall through.

anyway, we’ve spoken about the witches lore, let’s move onto the vampire lore. so, vampires have to feast every few days. if they don’t they’ll become more aggressive, more erratic in their need for blood, right? why doesn’t this rule apply to ava? time and again at the beginning of the book we’re told that she was fed a lot more often, making her even more reliant on having a steady source of blood flow. sure ava doesn’t want to kill people, fine whatever. but she still needs to feast in some way. why is it after one or two mentions the first day in the woods about her thirst, it’s pretty never brought up again. all of the sudden, she’s fine. she can just be stronger than needing blood like she used to a DAY ago. no hunger, no desperate desires. yep, that adds up. she does eventually get blood periodically through the events (although i’m still not quite sure how many days pass during the book events). but it seems like it should have a bit more grip on her. but nope, ava is just that willfully strong that she can just say no. idk y’all… like, am i missing something here?

but okay, lets move away from any more of the world building. we’ve established pretty well how i feel about all that. let’s move onto our main girls ava and kaye. oh... yeah, and some tristan dude i guess. i’m sorry but you could’ve removed tristan from the story and it would’ve turned out the exact same. like the poor boy had the personality of cardboard and was literally there just a character to be there when kaye or ava needed an extra pair of hands. but enough about him. let’s talk about the girls. i just did not believe their love story, their chemistry. it was a pretty big case of “i can change them for the better”. ava was this pure, understanding person who wanted everyone to have their own better lives. (i mean until she totally wasn’t anymore, but that’s neither here nor there, i’m not really surprised with her arc). but kaye? kaye deeply hated vampires and especially ava, who she somehow thought killed her mother. that was all overturned for their “budding” relationship after a couple days together. we’d be told that they have this massive friendship through flashbacks. that they have very important, sentimental items (like scarves that are only mentioned TWICE). but in the present? i don’t see it.

there’s so much more unexplained things about the book that i could get into. the glowing lake, the forest swallowing the people, the arkana speaking to ava (why though?), the writing, the pacing and order of the chapters. but we’d genuinely be here all day. and i don’t want to think about this book anymore right now. it took me over two weeks to finish a book that usually only take me a few days. i’m exhausted by this world. so that's it, goodbye.

The Witch and the Vampire

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