Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.
Book: This Vicious Grace
Author: Emily Thiede
Book Series: The Last Finestra Book 1
Rating: 5/5
Diversity: Male and female partner fontes, one lesbian character, but for the most part the book isn’t very forthcoming with labels on the characters. The book also focuses on platonic friendships via the fonte plotline.
Recommended For…: young adult readers, fantasy, romance
Publication Date: June 28, 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy Romance
Recommended Age: 17+ (death, gore, violence, religion, grief, parental abandonment, alcohol consumption, language, sexual content, romance)
Explanation of CWs: There is a lot of violence, gore, and death in the book and a lot of discussion about grief and parental abandonment through either their own choice or through death. There is a lot of religion in this book as it’s the backbone of the book, but the religion is fairly made up. However there is prayer and reverence to holy things and people in the book. There is some alcohol consumption shown in the book by teenage characters. There is some cursing in the book, but it’s slight. There is some sexual content, including consensual groping and one sex scene. There is also romance in the book and the romance is enemies to lovers.
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Pages: 448
Synopsis: Three weddings. Three funerals. Alessa’s gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner’s magic, not kill every suitor she touches.
Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island’s only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.
Desperate to survive, Alessa hires Dante, a cynical outcast marked as a killer, to become her personal bodyguard. But as rebellion explodes outside the gates, Dante’s dark secrets may be the biggest betrayal. He holds the key to her survival and her heart, but is he the one person who can help her master her gift or destroy her once and for all?
Emily Thiede’s exciting fantasy debut, This Vicious Grace, will keep readers turning the pages until the devastating conclusion and leave them primed for more!
Review: I am blown away with how much I loved this book. The Italian inspired doomsday book is wonderfully well written and will keep you on the edge of your seat. The book is well plotted and I absolutely loved how a lot of the book focused on plantonic relationships and, while there was a romance in the end, the book also held true to being unique in not making the relationship the focal point by the end but the partnership that was created by many friends and showing a platonic relationship. The book also showed the possibility of male and female partner fontes and at least one lesbian character. The book did well to be unique and it had really well done character development and world building.
The only things that I really didn’t like are that I think the book would have been better as a standalone, but I am excited to read the sequel, and I didn’t like how the book didn’t have clearly defined labels for the characters.
Verdict: I really enjoyed this one and I highly recommend it!
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