Book: A Vow of Shadow & Blood by Charlene Antrobus
Reviewed by Karina's Magical Reads
Rating: 4.5/5
4.5 ⭐️
1.5 🌶
The cliffhanger on this book hurt my feelings. I mean split your soul in two kind of pain. How did we get here you ask? Let me tell you...
This story follows Adina, a human girl who lives in the heart of a vampire ruled world. Everything she hates is exactly who she must serve... Vampires. Adina's only sole purpose is to protect and help her sister, Willow, who suffers from an unknown illness that could be an end to her life. The only way to help her sister is to slay the Vampires that she is forced to be a play thing for or their next blood meal. Doing so provides her the Venom her sister's very life depends on. Life for Adina takes a drastic turn when she gets into a dangerous situation and a mysterious stranger shows up with a group that helps save her and her friend Tori's lives. But, help always comes with a price, right? The price is her sister's life and in order get her sister back and to save Willow, she has to do the bidding of this new stranger. Adina has now been demanded to find a way into the Vampire Prince's palace to do the one thing that could end her own life, END THE PRINCES LIFE. Doing so will fulfill her requirement in order for her sister to be returned. Easy enough, right? WRONG! Things catapult from here, the twists, turns and burns are tenfold from this moment on. But Adina's entire world revolves around doing anything and everything to get her sister back.
This book was really great. It held a pretty good pacing, with a couple of spots where it felt a little drawn out, but it was still easy to follow and enjoy. This book gives you one of the slowest burns you will find. Just when I thought I knew where the romance was headed, the story flipped and the final direction revealed itself and I was here for it.
I love a good slow burn and this one was agonizing at times, but mostly in a good way.
I would have loved just a little more between the two MC's but I hope we will get more of that in book 2. The side characters in this book were fun and provided support and banter to the main characters in the story. Several of them you find yourself rooting for, but be careful and don't get attached to them all because you know...authors love to remove them from the storyline like they just waltz into your computer file and bam...DELETE. Oh, you like this character? Well, I'm gonna take them from you kind of energy. lol Charlene you know what you did, ma'am, and on more than one occasion!! 😭😭
The ending of this book came in like a freight train and it did NOT STOP for anyone & NO feelings spared. My emotions were all over the place and I was afraid to blink and miss something. The twists and turns were wild and a couple of revelations were unexpected. Overall this debut book was a great read and I really enjoyed the world, magic system and the premise of the story.
I'm eagerly waiting for book 2 because I seriously need my soul back please
Thank you Charlene and Book Sirens for this ARC OPPORTUNITY. This review is of my own thoughts and ratings.