V.E. Schwab

A super-powered collision of extraordinary minds and vengeful intentions—V. E. Schwab returns with the thrilling follow-up to Vicious. Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine. But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her newfound power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other once more. With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity—and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

Vengeful

Smaug

Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. "He doesn't know how patient you are," he said. "Doesn’t know you like I do."

 Eli cleaned the blood from his hand. "No" he sad softly, "No one ever has."

Whitney Lambert

But glass is only brittle until it breaks. 

Caroline 

Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. “He doesn’t know how patient you are,” he said. “He doesn’t know you like I do.” Eli cleaned the blood from his hand. “No,” he said softly. “No one ever has.”

God never gives us more than we can bear. 

Giovanna Marulli Borges 

Liz Griffin

victor/angie are actually soulmates if you think about it (can’t wait to see sdyney go crazy though)

envie,

Riley Bell

I really loved the first book of the series! I only gave this second book 4 stars because I felt it was a bit unnecessary. I was very happy with the way Vicious ended and didn’t need a continuation or a “final showdown” between Eli and Victor. While the book was very good, I couldn’t help but think the whole time that it would make a GREAT tv show (if done correctly of course). Overall though another awesome read from Schwab!

Whilst I thought that this was a great conclusion to what was supposed to be a duology, I'm so excited that there's going to be a third book because I wanna hang out with Syd (June is cool too, but she betrayed my baby and she's gonna have to earn my love back) 

Kate B-L

Victor noooooooooo. 

Whilst I thought that this was a great conclusion to what was supposed to be a duology, I'm so excited that there's going to be a third book because I wanna hang out with Syd (June is cool too, but she betrayed my baby and she's gonna have to earn my love back) 

Maria

I enjoyed this book, but I guess my expectations were too high. I loved Vicious, mostly because of my attachment to its characters. But the addition of the new characters stole away from the overall development of the original set, which I think is a shame, because I would have loved to see a more in depth take into their relationships and lives post-Vicious. Similarly, the wide range of characters and POVs didn’t leave much development for the new additions either, leaving them to be two-dimensional and somewhat boring at times. And while the time skips worked great for the first book, it just created unnecessary confusion this time around; way too often I found myself having to scroll back up to check the exact moment a particular scene was taking place in, then trying to figure out how it fits into the grander timeline. 
I liked the exploration of their powers and their obvious limits, especially in Sydney’s case, and to some extent Victor’s. And I actually liked how the last part played out, although the plot until then felt somewhat dragged out for way too long.

Isabella 

I was scared to read this book because I was afraid it might ruin the series for me, but I LOVED it as well. I still prefer Vicious, but this book was still captivating and intriguing on its own. It was sad to see Eli's background, and with all of the background we got for Marcella, I just wished we got that same amount for June (especially with her strange obsession with Sydney). V.E Schwab really knows how to make a page-turner book because I couldn't put the book down; writing is amazing as always. Schwab really knows how to write imperfect, flawed characters, but still making us love them. I'm excited for the next book, and I hope we get to see more of Victor, Sydney, and Mitch bonding.

What the fuck ??? I still have so many questions and the ending wasn’t so happy and I can’t sleep

Indi

rhegan🧋

4.5 ⭐️ all of this could have been solved if eli and victor just kissed

Tatiana

AYOOOO I FINISHED A BOOK LETSGOOOOO
Full review to come (maybe)

4.5/5

“Unbelievable, thought Marcella. Her husband reduced to ash, Tony dead at his desk, and yet they still didn’t even bother to draw their guns.”

Vicious had shook me, but this was absolutely mind blowing.
To put it simply, I ate up ever single aspect of this book up.

V.E. Schwabs story telling absolutely knocked me off my feet in this one, because i did not want to put this book down.

Personally speaking, when it comes to sequels, I am not into new characters. However, Marcella Fricken Morgan,, this brilliantly crafted character that I absolutely came to adore. 

As usual, Victor Vale remained extremely defendable although the ending has me confused and my heart beating very fast but I will remain protecting this man.

“What a nuisance, Victor told himself, even as he rested his hand on her head.”

The dynamic bw vic and syd, aaa what could've been if they werent EO's with their lives constantly at stake.. 

I found being in Eli's pov the most intriguing, the way the man thought,, a very evil genius.

The only reason I wouldnt give this 5 stars is bcos of the rush at the end. I enjoyed the pacing through out the book but when it finally came to the end, which was supposed to be the big moment, it just felt so rushed and I wish we got more.

no matter, this book is def going in my "always recommend" shelf.

ariadna

Geoffrey Froggatt

Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she's finally gained the control she's always sought, and will use her new-found power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She'll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other. With Marcella's rise, new enmities create opportunity and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning. I loved the first book and welcomed the return to this world. My favorite part about this world are the characters and their relationships. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine. I loved the alternating POVs and the way that the old characters interacted with the new ones. The writing and the pacing were just as good as the first book, and I was excited to return to this world and its characters. I loved learning about the newer characters and their powers, but I agree with many other readers that this second book is not as strong as the first. Despite not enjoying this book as much, I still love this world, and would gladly return for a third outing. I hope V. E. Schwab returns for a third book and makes this duology into a trilogy.

didn’t hit like i thought it would unfortunately

Danyella Barajas

Daymaris Arca

IVE DONE IT! I don’t think I’ve ever been more morally confused on who to root for. I was concerned for both Eli and Victor the whole time. VE is such a genius with all her books. I have not read a VE book that I haven’t loved! Good luck Arline you’re going to LOVE Darker Shade.

Hannah Yang

After reading Vicious, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Vengeful. Then I read Xenya's review (which, unsurprisingly, I entirely agree with, and is a much more well-written expression of my thoughts) and dialed down my expectations a bit.

Vengeful was still delicious as a book in the 'page-turning, read in one day, wanted to find out what happens next' sense, and I still love the Villains universe, but I think it misses some of the things that made Vicious so great. Basically, Vicious set a high bar that this sequel did not quite reach. 

I'm not sure how best to put this, but I felt like Vengeful stepped a little too far from the 'science fiction' / plausibility of Vicious and became more fantasy-esque? Where the first book felt like a slow-burn character study based primarily on Victor and Eli's (amazing!!!!) dynamic, this book felt very primed-for-a-dramatic-TV-series and spent more time on the ~exciting new powers and destruction~. One of the things I loved was how personalized (and limited) EOs powers were based on their NDEs and prior lives. The concept was, after all, based on a research project. But while Marcella's backstory and NDE were developed, I could not get attached to June's or Jonathan's characters at all. More on that later. The point is, I felt like one of the ways that Vicious shone was its whole consideration of the 'humanity of villains' / banality of evil -- in contrast, Vengeful veers into supervillain/superhero territory with its flashy new powers, four mob bosses?, EON, and inexplicable brilliant scientist.

The rest of my comments will contain spoilers:

(view spoiler)[1. While I appreciated a lot of the sections about Eli, especially insight into his childhood and Victor's influence on him, I was not a fan of how the returning cast of characters' stories played out. Victor's new predicament, while super interesting as a concept, seems to have turned him into a different (Eli-in-Vicious-esque) character -- which he himself acknowledges and does nothing about! (The fact that this is solved later in like half a chapter by a human, with very little explanation, despite Victor's EO search taking up half the book, was also a big question mark for me.) Also, I feel like Sydney dealing with Serena's death was not allotted enough space at all. Why was this not something Sydney and Victor dealt with together (or even against one another)? They had one little confrontation and then..? Where were the Victor-Sydney-Mitch-Dol family interactions?! How did Victor just leave at the end? How did Sydney just let him leave? Excuse me???

2. I am just in denial about the way Eli died. Please see Xenya's aforementioned review for how it should have gone. The Angst of Eli and Victor, Victor and Eli...... (especially since there is a passage where they are killing Marcella and Victor literally thinks that it was like they were a team again, fighting against a greater evil.... hello....)

3. I simply cannot bring myself to care about the new characters?
- For a second, I thought June might have been Serena (because of her attachment to Sydney) but that didn't really make sense + ended up not being the case anyways, which only leaves me confused about why June is attached to Sydney. Her power is cool, but I don't think we learn enough/anything about her backstory and NDE for it to become truly interesting.
- Marcella felt kind of... gratuitously girl-power-y? Like, a caricature of the strong female character taken to the point where she is clearly and indefensibly morally wrong? I feel like I would have sympathized with her more, or found her more interesting, if it didn't become apparent that she had been plotting to take over the mob for a decade (that is, if her power-hungriness was something that developed as a result of gaining power, not as something that was always there). I will say that I appreciated the poetic-ness of her and Eli's powers cancelling each other out.
- I think Jonathan could have literally not existed and it would not have made a difference. 

4. While I think the plot point of EON was something kind of inevitable for any story involving superhumans -- and had potential, especially with Eli pointing out that they were asking him to do the same thing that he was imprisoned for -- the whole Dr. Haverty subplot seemed like a missed opportunity / underdeveloped? He basically disappears for the entire middle of the book only to miraculously appear at the end with the power suppressant that kills Eli and saves Victor? When he is first introduced, the concept of Eli's regeneration as a tool to drive medicine forward was super compelling (is it morally acceptable to torture one person, who will not suffer long-term consequences, for an unlimited supply of organs?), but he ultimately ended up feeling like a convenient deus ex machina. (Also... reading this now, it seems contradictory to Dr. Haverty's supposed goals of using EOs for science to create a power suppressant that kills them? I need more backstory on Dr. Haverty.) (hide spoiler)]

I think I need to process more to figure out how I feel about Vengeful. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. "He doesn't know how patient you are," he said. "Doesn't know you like I do."
Eli cleaned the blood from his hand.
"No," he said softly. "No one ever has."

Nouran Hazem

A super-powered battle of genius, cruelty, and the lengths one will go for vengeance--V. E. Schwab returns with the end to the Villains duology. Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney Clarke once had Serena--beloved sister, betrayed enemy, powerful ally. But now she's alone, except for her thrice-dead dog, Dol. And then there's Victor, who thinks Sydney doesn't know about his most recent act of vengeance. Victor himself is under the radar these days--being buried and re-animated can strike concern even if one has superhuman powers. But despite his own worries, his anger remains. And Eli Ever still has yet to pay for the evil he has done.

Nessa Luna

Not as great as the first book but still good.

Lydia Enge

Isabella

so much build up and so little payoff :( it was a little bit too convoluted, a little bit too long, and a little bit over its head, which is so disappointing because i think its predecessor shined because of its simplicity.

Super goed geschreven maar beetje traag en geen verassende plot ofz 

Silvie van der struik

Brittany Peterson

Nouran

Colleen

4 Stars
 
*Note: If you haven’t read Vicious yet but are planning to, I would avoid reading anything about Vengeful since even the publisher’s description has spoilers for the first book.*
 
I read Vicious earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised by it. I liked the nuances of the morally grey characters. I was glad to find out that the sequel, Vengeful, was coming out this year. While I still enjoyed the sequel, I didn’t love it. Most of what was fresh about the first book seemed humdrum in the sequel. And while the characters were delicious antiheroes, the plot was not as impactful as I had hoped.
 
As the title indicates, this is a story about vengeance. Vengeance can make many forms and have farther reaching consequences than people expect. Almost every character in the book is seeking some sort of vengeance though they use different rationalities and different paths to reach their vengeful goals.
 
There are some familiar faces carried over from the first book. But there are also a lot of new characters as well. One of the great things about Vengeful was that it really brought the Girl Power. There were two new characters in particular who were awesome: June – a shape-shifting assassin and Marcella – a destructive mob boss’s wife out to prove her power. Those two really made the book! Well-written female villains are so very hard to find. This series is great at exploring the many shades of moral grey. Even characters when characters did bad things, I understood their motivations.
 
Like the first book, Vengeful is told in a non-chronological format. It skips back and forth while slowly circling towards an unnamed big event. While this didn’t bother me the way most non-chronological plot lines do, it wasn’t as smooth as the first book. Because Vicious mainly focused on Victor and Eli, the jumps on the timeline were easier to follow. But Vengeful introduces more spotlight characters, so you have to try to follow several different character’s stories that are simultaneously jumping back and forth over a couple decades. Once the different threads started to come together, it got much more interesting. But initially, it was hard to keep track of who was where when. The plot was so dispersed and took quite a while to align. That was one of the big things keeping this book from getting a higher rating from me.
 
The writing style was sinister and crude at times, but I was engrossed all the way through. I did think a few times that perhaps Schwab was trying very hard to make this an adult book and threw in some graphic content and language just to try to differentiate from her other works. It was darker than the first book, which I was fine with. But some of it felt less than organic to the story.
 
The ending was decent but not mind-blowing. It was too spread out to be impactful. The elements were all there, but it had more fizzle than sizzle. I just wanted it to pack a little more punch. And there were definitely enough things left open-ended to allow for another sequel. I’ll still continue on if there are more books in the series, but I hope the next one will be able to combine the best elements from the previous books while still building something new.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 4 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 5 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 4 Stars
Level of Captivation: 5 Stars
Originality: 4 Stars

Apiecalypse Jen

It's hard to know what to expect when the first book knocks it out of the park. Vengeful felt completely different than Vicious in both the style and the narrative that was woven. Despite this, it was still a great experience to read. As with the first, the characters were rich and detailed, and you loved to hate them. I struggle to connect with the new characters, and I often found myself wanting to hurry through those parts to get to the characters that I did care about. If you have read Vicious, this book is a must-read, but be prepared that it will be different. There are new characters and new problems. Overall, very good, but not as good as the first.

Vengeful

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