The Devil Makes Three

The Devil Makes Three: 2/5 Trigger Warnings: Self-harm, child abuse, parental illness, blood/gore, explicit violence, possession leading to degradation of mental state Premise: This YA Fantasy Horror follows Tess, a student, and aspiring cellist, working part-time as a school librarian and dealing with the posh rich folk of her top-notch boarding school. Eliot Berch is the worst, constantly requesting numerous restricted books, leaving Tess to track them down. After an ill-fated bet, the two stumble into an ancient part of the library housing powerful grimoires, and the two accidentally set free a demon who will do anything to stay free. This includes threatening everybody Tess and Eliot love, including one another. Writing & Plot: I don't normally pick up YA Horror, but the dark academia setting really caught my attention. One thing this book does extremely well is set the atmosphere. The whole ambiance of the book is eerie, like somebody is waiting in the corner of your room or creepy like spiders crawling up your spine. The plot itself is interesting, along with the setting of a library. The entire premise is spot on, and Tori Bovalino does a great job bringing it all to life. I don't find myself very squeamish by any means, but this book has A LOT of gore, where it borders on triggering. Much of it is self-inflicted, and I want to urge the reader to read the trigger warnings before reading this. It is not a slight trigger warning; the topics of this book delve deep into self-harm and blood and gore. I'm usually okay with these topics, but this was so extreme I felt uncomfortable and worry if it's too much for a YA book.Sometimes I felt like there was so much gore and no reason to make it disgusting and upsetting. If you like gore and don't mind the trigger warnings, you may enjoy the book, but be warned: it is not for the faint of heart and probably for a 17+ audience. Characters: I liked Tess and Eliot, I think they were cool complex characters, but I didn't love their relationship. I found myself not caring for the romance at all. This could be due to the high stakes of the book, but it seemed trivial in the context of what was happening. Furthermore, I felt there was an undertone of coercion between the demon and Tess, which I did not like. It reminded me of The Darkling and Alina from Shadow and Bone. These parts did not sit well with me, and I had to stop reading. It borders on problematic. Conclusion: I liked the setting, premise, and characters, but the details were just too much for me to handle as a reader. Again, if you don't mind these issues, you'll probably like the book; it just wasn't for me. Make sure you read the trigger warnings and make an informed decision about picking this book up.

** spoiler alert ** 3.5 stars all of this because they opened a book they weren’t supposed to 🤔

i had no idea where this book was going but it was so good

When a hard-working student and a witch accidentally summon a devil of ink, all goes to hell. Now they can give in to the devil and his charms or fight him. But the devil will tell his story too.

i didn´t think it would make me cry, but here we are - a couple tears rolling down

Uhm… excuse me?? Is no one going to talk about the ending?? Holy shit

Elliot is secretly studying magic to cure his mother that's dying of cancer. He meets Tess that works at the school library, and in search of books that might help him in his quest, they find a book hidden in a secret tunnel and inadvertently set the devil free that uses books' ink to scare and manipulate the characters. I didn't feel exactly scared with this book, but I understand that some may feel that way because of how well Tori Bovalino sets the mood describing the eerie scenes.

it wasn’t bad , i just wasn’t really enjoying it the whole time. there were some points where it started to get interesting and then by the next chapter it was back to being boring again 😭. maybe this book just isn’t for me.

There were a lot of faults where things didn't make sense just because the story needed something to not work. Elliot has magic, but its never developed, and its never helpful. At one point, its mentioned hat Tess grew up with ghosts, in a supernatural sense, but that's never touched upon or mentioned again. It's just strange. Also, Tess has magic, that she never knew about or developed and somehow its better than Elliots? Outside of that, the book was so fascinating. The monster was so terrifying, the description of Regina and her decaying body was something that I had to actually pause the audiobook and take a minute because it was so gruesome. It was tense and horrifying and so good. I would have loved this as an adult book, I could only imagine how much better the story would be for me personally considering how good it was with YA appropriate content.

4.5 rounded up I feel a little confused by the ending

4.5

This book was … okay. Tbh I finished it because I hate dnfing. I liked how different it was to other books I’ve read and the dark academia vibes but I did not connect with the characters at all and I didn’t get exited while reading it. It just wasn’t for me

I don’t know whether every person who rated this book 4 stars or more has swallowed ink, but this wasn’t it, chief! It’s been a while since my last enemies to lovers (since I don’t like that trope), but if whatever Eliot and Tess had going on is supposed to be enemies to lovers… I thought enemies actually meant enemies, not characters who develop a dislike for each other because one puts sticks notes with swear words on the other person’s books. This book was marketed as enemies-to-lovers meets dark academia meets ghosts and demons, but woooooo, this book did not deliver! You go, Tess and Eliot, thanks for giving me nothing! Okay, so Eliot and Tess don’t know each other until Tess puts a whole lot of mean and insulting sticky notes on the books Eliot checked out of the campus library Tess works at. She thinks his father, the dean, wants to check them out and plans to remove the notes before he comes to collect them. Little does she know that it’s his good-looking 😊 tall 😊 bookish 😊 but incredibly obnoxious 😊 son who requested them! Obviously, things go awry, Eliot finds the notes, thinks they are addressed to him and is so infuriated by this stubborn 😊 wilful 😊 but strangely pretty??? girl at the checkout!! Y’all, this whole set-up was so melodramatic and felt so forced and how these two are then obviously forced to work together because of the devil that escapes an evil magical book Tess reads from- *eye-roll intensifies* Literally, the stupidest reason I have ever read for positioning two characters at opposite ends only to have them become closer and *open up to each other* all the while slowly realising that the other might not be so obnoxious and annoying after all and… aren’t his/her eyes pretty? You know what, given the fact that this can't even be described as enemies-to-lovers, I'll tag this as haters-to-lovers: so much melodrama only to get the characters to hate each other. Furthermore, this book was also described as a YA crossover/gothic horror debut. Yeah, the YA part I got but the gothic horror? Coraline was literally more spooky than this, and the former is a children’s book. On top of that, the university/library setting was pretty isolated. We learn early on that Tess can see ghosts and that she works at Jessop library, lives on campus and that Eliot is British, but beyond that? Worldbuilding? Non-existent! Eliot and his dying mum are witches but did we get any background info on that? Do other people except Eliot, his mum, and Tess experience/practice magic? Are there secret societies or government departments overseeing magic? Are there schools for children with abilities? We just don’t know. Last but not least, I thought the writing was undercooked and unseasoned. Throughout the book, I had the feeling that the author tried to pull a V. E. Schwab, but hmm, no, that didn’t work. The writing lacked atmosphere and passion. All in all, this wasn’t a book I’d recommend to anyone. No, it wasn’t as bad as Jaws, but even though it’s only been three weeks since I finished reading it, I can neither remember much nor can I think of anything positive to say about this book. If you are looking for a good spooky read that features witches, covens, a murder and a teenage protagonist, may I recommend Sanctuary??

The whole premise of this book was promising at first glance. I mean who doesn’t love books, the devil and the mere suggestion of dark academia. It tried to give all of these things. Some things stuck, while others didn’t. I’d best describe this as an enjoyable read. At no point was I ever blown away, but on the flip side I never felt like it was a chore to get through a chapter. I think one thing that this book does suffer from is pacing. The first half of the story is pretty slow paced and doesn’t really pick up until after the halfway point which left most of the action till later pages. This is not a massive issue because I’d expect the chance to learn about the main characters, Tess and Eliot, in the first half so I could actually care about the outcome. Though for me I never felt that connection with either of them. I will wholeheartedly put my hands up and say that I really liked Eliot and Tess as characters, however I didn’t really care about them. A lot of the conflict in this book is focused on both Tess and Eliot wanting to protect the people they love, but I felt like I never saw them interact with anyone except each other. Tess’ sister is barely mentioned except to build up her back story with two or three short scenes with them together, while Eliot’s dying mother gets some phone calls. I never saw these relationships as anything real or deep because I was told not shown, making it all feel a little shallow for my liking. This was a massive red flag for me because even the romantic side of Tess and Eliot’s relationship didn’t convince me. I honestly think I would have preferred a platonic relationship between them. All in all, I think that there was a lot of unexplored emotional depth in this book which made me care more. Though I will say that Tori Bovalino is very good at writing body horror. I’m not someone who reads a lot of horror, but all of the horror elements were done extremely well. It was to the point that I could easily visualise these moments. I would love to read some adult horror from her because she really goes hard with it. Overall, I really enjoyed this. I was never fully convinced and wished we got to see more magic and emotional depth, but the entire plot and premise was fun and well written.

I am sad. I am sad because this book had such a good premise that I couldn’t fathom how it could disappoint me. But it did. The thing is, the first part of the book was SO GOOD. I read this in October and it suited the vibe of autumn in East London (where I live) so perfectly. It was proper dark academia with the setting in the library, the floors and the private offices of the seniors. I was sucked in immediately and was so glad I had found a book that matched my mood so well. Unfortunately, the 5-star feeling lasted very little. The Characters First off, the characters should have been college students. It makes no sense for them to be high schoolers as you keep forgetting their actual age while reading. There are virtually no adults and they are in a campus based school, so I assume the only reason for their young age was because they needed to make the book YA and not NA. I don’t really have much else to say. The main characters were well-built and their internal monologue was coherent (but not consistent with their actions, more on that later). I thought Eliot was specifically interesting and I found him very charming. I didn’t really like Tess that much. The Relationships While the characters were usually good and well built, the relationships between them weren’t. Which is bizarre. The father is too bad, like exaggeratedly cruel and bad. Lucille is useless and we don’t really understand her reason behind giving Eliot (view spoiler)[the tickets (hide spoiler)]. The relationship between Tess and her dad or even her mum was so strained but we are not told why aside from the bankruptcy. Which ok it is horrible but then she says at the end that her parents were always naive and living with them will be hard but when did we see this before?? Also Regina was horrible to Tess but when she (view spoiler)[is dead Tess remembers her as if she was (hide spoiler)] a great friend laughing together in the aisle??? The love is too insta- for me. From the start we see Eliot being interested in tess but he doesn’t go from not knowing her to crush, but directly to love basically. He immediately thinks of her as way too important considering the little they talked. Like I prefer seeing them crushing on each other and building the relationship slower than go from nothing to being in love so fast. The Horror and Folklore Neither was present in the book. Which is supposedly a horror based on witchcraft and folklore and demons. There was too much romance and family drama and too little horror. I don’t like horror movies or books, so if I say this book needed more horror, it means there wasn’t any here. I was never spooked. We get to see the characters think about their feelings for each other and how they MUST not act on them, so there is no space for the horror. The part where (view spoiler)[Regina follows Tess home was good and I found it so gory and terrible that she was scratching at the door so much it splintered and Eliot found pieces of skin and flesh on the door when he arrived. (hide spoiler)] Like this is what I wanted, something a bit scary and gory but not too much. This is probably the only bit because in any other scene with action there is too much ink and sorry but that is the least scary thing and I don’t know what it smells like so I just get very little from those moments. When it comes to folklore, we get nothing as well. Eliot is basically a witch but we don’t see any detail of that. He always makes chalk signs, uses some herbs and crystals, and that’s all. Can’t we get more details?? Just tell us what herbs and what they are for, make something up but give us something. We barely get to see him making magic and always something lame like healing and cleaning spells, so at least go into details. Even the demon is so vaguely explained. Truth was a boy mixed with a demon, or just a boy who became a demon? In that case, who is the demon? Why is he in the book? What is the book even and how did it come to be? I was so frustrated that I didn’t get any answer on this. We don’t even know how (view spoiler)[the aunt found out about having to tell the spell backward to stop the demon (hide spoiler)]. The Things that didn’t make Sense 1. The internal monologue, too deep for highschoolers (that’s why you make them college students) 2. This random school in the US has got a high-security library basement filled with hundreds of grimoires and spell books, because what American high school doesn’t? 3. Tess sees ghosts. This is never explained or used in the plot. We know she sees them, but not during the narration of the book so it’s completely irrelevant for us to know that. 4. Tess and Regina seem to be overloaded with work, but the only student that ever goes in the library is Eliot. We don’t know who took the books that Tess keeps reshelving. This book had no extras. But by far the Thing that made the Least Sense was the character’s actions. Firstly, they do not reflect their internal monologue. An example is Eliot thinking he must not show Tess he cares for her, and then prompt kissing her. Secondly, they often acted in a stupid way. Like, they both catch fire and burn and then it all ends and it looks like nothing happened...so they just got home and didn’t talk about it. ????? Whyyyy??? Tess is attacked by a (view spoiler)[decaying Regina in her home, so let’s not talk about it and chat about our families in the park with pizza??? (hide spoiler)] Then we speak with (view spoiler)[Mathilde and she says she will help us, so we split up, go home for god knows what, and come back later. Staying together would prevent the devil from killing and possessing one of us without us knowing, as it happened, but better take a shower and wear all black than take that precaution (hide spoiler)]. I get that fear might make you do silly things, but here it’s too much. It just isn’t realistic and some of their actions are so stupid just because otherwise there would be no way to advance the plot. (view spoiler)[Just like when they go home before facing the demon, it was done solely so that Mathilde can get possessed (hide spoiler)]. But if your plot line depends on characters doing the most stupid and unjustifiable things, then it isn’t really good. You either need to find another plot device, or change the plot altogether. The Comparison with Vicious This book reminded me so much about the university scenes of Vicious. Not in a plagiarism way, but in a good reminiscing way. The atmosphere was similar and I enjoyed that. But Vicious was done so much better. That book barely had descriptions, but they were so well done that I made up all the places the story is set in, in my mind. I could see the library, the room, the dining area. Like the author managed to make me conjure those places that I never saw before and my vision of them was made up and not based on anything I’ve ever seen in real life. This book didn’t give me any sort of vision instead. The dorm room was the one I slept in when I went to Cambridge last month. The library was my undergraduate university one (really not dark academia-esqe). The restaurant was the restaurant of my bachelor campus. I didn’t *see* any new image, which for me means that the writing wasn’t evocative enough. The Ending I HATE open endings if there isn’t a sequel. What am I going to do with that end??? What does it mean? Yuck. Maybe I am stupid and don’t get open endings specifically, but I really have no idea what I am meant to do with it and what that is supposed to mean. (view spoiler)[The devil hasn’t died? Harry is inside of Tess, or is it the devil? (hide spoiler)] I don’t like not knowing what will happen in the future. But if it is a way to leave an open door for a sequel if the author feels up for it, I don’t really like that either. My initial rating was 3 stars, but after writing this review I cannot bring myself to give more than 2. It was a debut so I accept that much can be improved in the next books, but I am still left unsatisfied.

It was an interesting read with some genuinely creepy moments. However, I wouldn't call it a particulary impactful book. It was a nice few hours though :)

I expected more from it, since the idea seemed so interesting. But the characters weren't relatable, on fact, they could be kind annoying at times. The villain was even more boring than the humans... It was so... Meh...

I received this book in my monthly Illumicrate box so it wasn't a book I would've normally picked up. For what it is, which is definitely Dark Academia and circles around the devil, it's surprisingly a laid back book. We follow the two main characters, who in normal circumstances, wouldn't have given each other a second thought, but when the situation pushes them together, they do everything they can to protect one another. I enjoyed the story, but the character and story development was a little too slow for me because nothing was pushing us forward in the book. There is definitely a sense of urgency and the stakes are high to defeat the villain, but it didn't feel like it mattered too much until the end.

Absolutely love Eliot tbh. Classic English-boy in dark academia, but what a sweet bean

Disclaimer: I received this arc and e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own. Book: The Devil Makes Three Author: Tori Bovalino Book Series: Standalone Rating: 5/5 Recommended For...: young adult readers, fantasy, paranormal, thriller, mystery, demons, possession Publication Date: August 10, 2021 Genre: YA Paranormal Recommended Age: 16+ (child abuse, self harm TW, gore, violence, romance, possession) Explanation of CWs: Child abuse, in both emotional and physical manners, is shown. There is unintentional self harm by a character. Lots and lots of gore. Possession also happens in the book and the devil is a strong opponent. Publisher: Page Street Kids Pages: 368 Synopsis: Tess Matheson only wants three things: time to practice her cello, for her sister to be happy, and for everyone else to leave her alone. Instead, Tess finds herself working all summer at her boarding school library, shelving books and dealing with the intolerable patrons. The worst of them is Eliot Birch: snide, privileged, and constantly requesting forbidden grimoires. After a bargain with Eliot leads to the discovery of an ancient book in the library's grimoire collection, the pair accidentally unleash a book-bound demon. The demon will stop at nothing to stay free, manipulating ink to threaten those Tess loves and dismantling Eliot’s strange magic. Tess is plagued by terrible dreams of the devil and haunting memories of a boy who wears Eliot's face. All she knows is to stay free, the demon needs her... and he'll have her, dead or alive. Review: I really liked this book! It was so atmospheric and I loved how it set my Halloween tone for this year. The book was a lot gorey, please be aware, but it was so good. The book also had a lot of comic relief, which really made the book kind of perfect in a way. The book did well with the character development and the world building. The book was also so well plotted and well written. The only downside I had with the book is that I felt like the story was a bit slow in places, but it was perfection otherwise. Verdict: It was great! A must read for Halloween this year.

Liked the premise, but the execution wasn’t my favorite.

Ok, so this book had been on my radar for months. A demon trapped in a book, a library, ink being weaponized by said demon, I was sold! Told from both Tess and Eliot's pov, I really enjoyed the almost conversational, inner monologue, tone from both characters. I liked the way they viewed each other, the way they both denied how they felt - even trying to talk themselves out of it - but each time they thought they were done with the other events would bring them back together. The story was well paced, well written, and both of our main characters were fleshed out nicely, with history and sadess, and a driving force - Eliot's search for a cure for his mother and Tess's need to protect her sister from the mess her father created - that led them to each other and down a path neither can get off of! Our side characters are great, adding something to the story that is more than just background, and I always appreciate a good revelation and twist close to the end! I can't really say more without giving spoilers away (which I don't like to do) so I will simply say thank you to the publishers and author for the eARC and the opportunity and give it a solid 4 stars (if they ever allow half stars I'd add a half for sure!) Definitely recommended!

You can check out my full review on my blog We Write at Dawn! At first, I wasn’t sure what this book was about. It was a long introduction to the characters and setting up the book. The plot didn’t even start to almost halfway through, when they finally went down and found the demonic book. Once we actually get into the plot of the book, it takes its sweet time building up. Honestly, it wasn’t until the last 100-150 pages that there was serious action and momentum in the book. This book isn’t a fast paced fantasy. This isn’t one that’s going to scoop you up and thrust you into an adventure. This is a slow, methodical book that drifts you through like a lazy river, until it throws you off a waterfall that you weren’t even sure was coming. Basically, if you don’t like it in the beginning, keep going, give it a real chance, and you might end up loving it!

4.5 really recommend for a YA Horror with the devil and witchcraft trigger warning for self-harm and graphic depictions of decapitation and blood.