Name: Laura Kehoe's review of What We Devour by Linsey Miller
Item: What We Devour
Rating: 5
Author: Laura Kehoe

Linsey Miller

From the author of Mask of Shadows comes a dark and intricate story of a girl who must tether herself to a violent ruler to save her crumbling world. Lorena Adler has a secret—she holds the power of the banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, inside her. She has spent her entire life hiding from the world and her past. She's content to spend her days as an undertaker in a small town, marry her best friend, Julian, and live an unfulfilling life so long as no one uncovers her true nature. But when the notoriously bloodthirsty and equally Vile crown prince comes to arrest Julian's father, he immediately recognizes Lorena for what she is. So she makes a deal—a fair trial for her betrothed's father in exchange for her service to the crown. The prince is desperate for her help. He's spent years trying to repair the weakening Door that holds back the Vile...and he's losing the battle. As Lorena learns more about the Door and the horrifying price it takes to keep it closed, she'll have to embrace both parts of herself to survive. This heart-pounding YA story of magic and danger is perfect for readers looking for: epic books for tweens and teens gay and lesbian fantasy and science fiction gripping stories with queer and gay magic and sorcery dazzling world-building and relatable characters tween and teen LGBTQ+ books high fantasy with asexual and aromantic representation lesbian and gay fairy tales

What We Devour

Liz Griffin

A new standalone dark fantasy, perfect for fans of Wicked Saints, from the author of Mask of Shadows duology and Belle R volte Undertaker Lorena is comfortable in her quiet life. She knows what her future holds, anonymity and a marriage to her best friend Julian. But when the notorious Crown Prince Alistair arrives at her doorstep with an arrest warrant for Julian's father, her life changes in an instant. The Prince immediately recognizes that Lorena is powerful and whisks her away to the capital in exchange for Julian's father's freedom. With Alistair she learns more about her power, as well as the danger facing the entire country. As a rebellion between the rich and powerful and the poor and downtrodden erupts, Lorena becomes less sure of her loyalties. Should she trust the boy she thought she loved and the world she thought she knew? Or should her faith lie with the boy she barely knows who has everything to lose? This heart-pounding YA story of magic and danger is perfect for readers looking for: epic books for tweens and teens gay and lesbian fantasy and science fiction gripping stories with queer and gay magic and sorcery dazzling world-building and relatable characters tween and teen LGBTQ+ books high fantasy with asexual and aromantic representation lesbian and gay fairy tales

Princess Irene Uddon

Laura Kehoe

This was such a creepy, fascinating, and unique book! I loved the magic system and how everything was connected together! It was a darker fantasy, but that didn't stop me from flying through it in only a few days!

The world and magic system were so well-developed! I felt like I could step right into this world and know exactly what to expect. It was so real, and so interesting!

I also really liked the characters. They all had plenty of flaws, but they also had redeeming qualities that made me want to root for them. I felt like I really understood and got to know these characters, which made their suffering all the more impactful (and sometimes painful). 

If you like somewhat darker fantasy and interesting magic systems, I would highly recommend picking this book up! I'm so glad I had the chance to read it. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Ally Wagner

3.5 stars

“What We Devour” is a dark, gritty book full of morally grey characters. Everyone is trying to do the right thing in the worse way.

In this world, some people are cursed (blessed?) with either a Noble wright, or a Vile one. Or, in our protagonist’s
case, dual-wrought. Using their power is not without fault, however. Sacrifices must be made. 

When Alistair, the bloodthirsty prince, comes to arrest the town’s head, Lorena enters a bargain to give her betrothed’s father a fair trial. The deal is that she will help the Vilewrought prince repair the door that keeps the Vile gods at bay. The price is high, but she’s determined to save her world. 

This book was very hard for me to get into. I love dark fantasies, but so much is thrown at you in the beginning that it gets a little hard to understand. Once I got hooked, I devoured it until I slowed again towards the end. Then it picked up at the last bit. Overall a good story, just be prepared for the vast amount of information.

Check your trigger warnings.

Thank you SourcebooksFire for the ARC!

cw: self harm, death, major character death

What We Devour was practically a perfect book for me. Initially requesting this book for the asexual representation outside of contemporary fiction, it wasn’t long before I was glad to have requested it for a vast number of reasons. I even managed to tolerate mentions of self-harm, one of my biggest triggers, and move on to be able to keep reading this book and keep seeing the events unfold. And by god, did they unfold at a pace I was not expecting despite the final resolution not occurring until the very last pages.

This is a hard one to review because I did love it so much, and I did get largely invested to the point of me spamming my friend with out-of-context spoilers to get them invested in a book they weren’t even reading. There were moments where I cried, where I got mad, where I had no choice but to rant to myself out loud earning glares from my cat. I was so drawn into this book from the very beginning, finding characters I loved and characters I hated and barely having my stance change throughout the pages. While I’m trying to keep this review as spoiler-free as I can, I have this overwhelming urge to pour every thought and feeling about every scene into this very paragraph. 

I say this often, but I am a very character driven reader. I believe that even the most basic of plots and worlds can draw me in with a well-developed character, but that wasn’t the case here. From the first moment I saw the map I was excited to dive in and learn about this world that had been created. It was easy to just fall into this world, discovering more about it as I read just felt natural to me. The plot was also just so easy for me to fall into, getting more and more curious as I read just aching for the solution and the happy ending that I truly believed the main characters deserved, specifically Lorena, Basil, and Mack. And while the ending was so far from what I had hoped for and expected, it still left me with this feeling and fulfillment. They’d gotten to the end, I’d gotten to the end with them.

I can’t start that last section by mentioning that I’m character driven and not dive into the characters, so here it goes. From the start, I adored Lorena. I loved that she’d set up a life for herself despite drawing the short straw and that it gave me aspects of found family, a trope I adore. Each character I met after that was an experience, and a lot of them gave me the “you hate them or love them, no in between” energy. I had definitely favourites throughout the book, and I can’t say I was surprised when I started feeling hatred for two characters I will not name, but will hint to when I say their endings were exactly what they deserved. Lorena’s asexuality was so personal to me, I rarely read about ace experiences that so closely mirror my own and I was so impressed to see that I was getting exactly what I’d hoped for when I first decided to read this. I was also pleasantly surprised to see a character hinted at being nonbinary, using the same set of pronouns that I do and having them respected entirely. I felt safe reading these characters, which is surprising in a story so dark.

The magic system in this book took a lot of darker turns, and I shocked myself being able to stomach some of the more intense scenes, as mentioned in the first part of this review. Magic that has aspects of blood magic is always a slippery slope and I was so scared in the first chapters of this book, unsure if I’d be able to handle it despite knowing that it was a content warning to begin with. I’m so pleased to discover that with proper content warnings and a book that I love so intensely that I can push through and still adore the book. 

Words actually can’t describe how much I loved this book and how much I’m going to refuse to shut up about it when it finally gets released and I don’t feel like I need to hold back on my spoiler-filled opinions.

Jolie

I had to take a couple of days to process What We Devour before I wrote the review for it. Normally, I don’t do that. I can sit down and write my review and be on my way. But with this book, I had to let everything that happened process before I could even entertain writing this review.

What We Devour is a dark fantasy. Before this book, when I thought of dark fantasy, I thought of Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewel series. I went into reading What We Devour, thinking it would be somewhat like those books. I was wrong, very wrong. This book took dark fantasy and ran with it.

There are several trigger warnings that I am going to address upfront. Trigger warnings are taken directly from Goodreads: self-harm (mainly cutting), murder (mass and child), sacrifices, executions, factory-related accidents and death, child neglect and abuse, filicide, references to siblings’ death, multiple scenes with death, mass suicide, violence, and blood.

What We Devour is a fast-paced book. From the beginning scenes, where Lorena is prepping a burial body, this book doesn’t stop at those frantic last scenes. The author doesn’t sugarcoat what Lorena is or what she can do. She also doesn’t sugarcoat The Heir, his mother, or anyone else in the book. I read through the book believing that 90% of the people introduced were psychopaths. I mean, if you could create or destroy, wouldn’t you be? Wouldn’t your abilities drive you mad, even with the bindings? I know it would for me.

The world that What We Devour is set in is a bleak, brutal world. Children, more often than not, outlived parents. If you were a wrought (noble or vile), you were often bound, against your will, to the court. You could also be brought up on false charges and sacrificed to The Door. As I said, it was a brutal, terrible world to live in.

I felt terrible for Lorena. All she wanted was a quiet life in Fellhollow, being the town’s undertaker. Instead, she is forced to reveal that she is a dual wrought and then forced to research for The Heir. She is forced to make terrible decisions and face some very uncomfortable truths about people she loved. By the end of the book, though, she did what she thought was right…what she thought would protect the people of her country. She couldn’t stop the inevitable, but she could save as many lives as she could.

The Heir was 100% a psychopath. But I don’t think he was a natural-born psycho. Instead, he was a made one through the abuse of his father and mother and by the power of his Vile wrought. I did have sympathy for him, though. He wanted, in the worse way, to close The Door so that the sacrifices would stop. He wanted someone to understand him.

What We Devour kept me on my toes reading. There were several twists in turns in the plotline that took me by surprise. Just a warning, don’t get too close to any of the characters (except Lorena). They are all expendable.

I loved the fantasy angle of the book. The author created a world that repulsed me, but at the same time, it intrigued me. Her explanation of Vile and Noble, how the wroughts were made, The Door, and what would happen when The Door was opened had me hooked.

The end of What We Devour left me sitting with my mouth open. Everything that happened took me 100% by surprise. The author didn’t resolve any storylines. Instead, she left me wanting to read book 2.

What We Devour is a dark fantasy that had me hooked from page 1. I enjoyed reading it!!

I would recommend What We Devour for anyone over the age of 21. There are violence, blood, murder, and suicide references. See above for a complete list of triggers.

For all my love for something dark, macabre and anything that talks about dark entities and lesser evils, I could not for the life of me enjoy this book even if I force myself. 

The book started out great. The concept and the thrill of reading something new and dark enticed me. But things got rather boring when the female protagonist became a researcher under the Prince's research in closing the door and replacing it with a new one that does not ask for human sacrifices whenever it gets agitated and hungry. 

It have excited me, with all the blood, contracts, talks of monsters lurking and trying to enter their world to end the humanity. Unfortunately the writing style is not to my liking. Its chaotic, its like the author was rumbling incoherent words trying to weave the story. Most of the time I feel like an imbecile cause I really cant understand anything. The writing style once they got into the palace became rushed. There is too much going on, too much that needs to be explained but unfortunately with a heavy heart I have to say that the author couldn't convey it to the readers properly. 

I almost DNFd the book but I hate DNFing a book so I kept going. I read the book for almost a week and this only happens when im either busy, on a slump or the book is boring me to death. Reading this book? I was the latter. Its not thrilling at all, and i always keep being lost in a not so good way. Even now that I have finished it, if you ask me to summarize it I will only tell you that its not good and cant tell you any details cause I really cant comprehend what was happening most of the time. 

The characters are unique but bland. The only thing I love in this book is the magic system which is bloody & macabre. It was refreshing! But thats it, nothing more.... hands down to the author tho for the inventive & fascinating magic system. 

Liz Griffin &
What We Devour by Linsey Miller

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What We Devour by Linsey Miller