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A review by cece_rants_raves_reviews
Kiss Me Deadly by Jessie Thomas
3.0
**I was provided with an ARC for an honest review#Booksirens**
Best way to describe is just a fun magic mystery mercenary series. I loved the variety of characters, I loved the bisexual representation, and while a lili predictable I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the plot. But .... some of the writing styles choices just kinda failed for me
Meet our local bisexual necromancer, Seraphina Mason
She not exactly the brightest of the bunch but she fights through any problem, learns to use her powers, and will absolutely make the more reckless decision if it saves more people
“Shit. So, this is how it ended. With my hunting ineptitude.
Made sense.
Ideally not great, but it tracked.”
Her sassy attitude took dark pleasure from bad things happening to people that annoyed her. The reveal of her abilities as a necromancer leads the audience to believe that she hasn't developed her powers to their full capacity as she thought
Secondary Characters had a great variety of people that stayed pretty one-dimensional and left me wanting more interactions with
“Devyn Shaw—the best damn vampire hunter in the 716—is your woman.
She also happens to be my ex.”
LIKE WHAT??! THAT'S ALL YOU GONNA TELL US?
Nathaniel Caligari, a local vampire
Rhys: "one of the city’s forensic pathologists and longtime innocent bystander to my paranormal bullshit”
and the sister Ellie sigghhhhh
I really struggled with this chick— the sisterly dynamic felt like two strangers in the same house who shared food. I saw her as removed and distant to Sera, the sister who is sacrificing everything for her while Ellie was just off doing her own thing which was ... what now??
The place where this book sorta struggles to me and the reason it doesn’t quite compare to the other great paranormal detectives like Kate Daniels or Nevada Baylor or Toby Daye is the lack of character relations and dynamics.
The sisterhood of Ellie and Sera is cute but surface deep. The romance of her and Nate is fun but hasn’t really gotten sexy or swoon-worthy. The rest of the characters are interesting with some great pop-up scenes like with Dev appearing for one battle scene and a witty line… but I literally couldn't describe any of their personalities to you just differed them by name and job title.
Worldbuilding this is an urban fantasy with magic normalized in our group of characters. It felt like we kept hearing about the major power players in the world but never really interacted with any groups.... why. it was mostly Sera directly explaining it to us. also why.
“For the sake of clarity, I think I should backtrack a little. The politics between hunters and vampires are complicated."
There are a ton of vampires !
But we don't know how the organized, whether its bunch of leaders of their own groups or one central
There are witches and warlocks !
But we don't meet any or know anything else about them
There are also vampire hunters or something...
do you see a fucking pattern there?
The Plot
I wanted the adventure to be more incorporated throughout the book but it was pretty limited to the end fight scene. I mean, it took till over half the book for our characters to even come up with a plan! to actually investigate the murders and cult! bruh.
It felt like the build-up of learning the world was explained to us and took up the majority of the book !! which sadly left the actual plot and characters actually taking initiative on the actions to be the last 100 pages.
Perhaps because this is the beginning of a series-type book with a large amount of world-building and explanation that kinda turned me off.
But it was also the writing style and choices made. I mean it felt passive with Sera directly explaining sooo much to me as the reader. Like why didn't the author try to use interactions with characters and dialogue to give us that information? The main character's own background with the sister felt more reminiscent of friends who could ignore each other than a big sister sacrificing everything to a little sister that just left her. like what the actual fuck.
I recommend if you just wanna try a fun mystery and vampires because this book clearly ticks all those essentials. But you really gotta make an effort to connect to the characters so it's more about the mystery and power buildup happening with Sera instead of focusing on the characters themselves
Best way to describe is just a fun magic mystery mercenary series. I loved the variety of characters, I loved the bisexual representation, and while a lili predictable I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the plot. But .... some of the writing styles choices just kinda failed for me
Meet our local bisexual necromancer, Seraphina Mason
She not exactly the brightest of the bunch but she fights through any problem, learns to use her powers, and will absolutely make the more reckless decision if it saves more people
“Shit. So, this is how it ended. With my hunting ineptitude.
Made sense.
Ideally not great, but it tracked.”
Her sassy attitude took dark pleasure from bad things happening to people that annoyed her. The reveal of her abilities as a necromancer leads the audience to believe that she hasn't developed her powers to their full capacity as she thought
Secondary Characters had a great variety of people that stayed pretty one-dimensional and left me wanting more interactions with
“Devyn Shaw—the best damn vampire hunter in the 716—is your woman.
She also happens to be my ex.”
LIKE WHAT??! THAT'S ALL YOU GONNA TELL US?
Nathaniel Caligari, a local vampire
Rhys: "one of the city’s forensic pathologists and longtime innocent bystander to my paranormal bullshit”
and the sister Ellie sigghhhhh
I really struggled with this chick— the sisterly dynamic felt like two strangers in the same house who shared food. I saw her as removed and distant to Sera, the sister who is sacrificing everything for her while Ellie was just off doing her own thing which was ... what now??
The place where this book sorta struggles to me and the reason it doesn’t quite compare to the other great paranormal detectives like Kate Daniels or Nevada Baylor or Toby Daye is the lack of character relations and dynamics.
The sisterhood of Ellie and Sera is cute but surface deep. The romance of her and Nate is fun but hasn’t really gotten sexy or swoon-worthy. The rest of the characters are interesting with some great pop-up scenes like with Dev appearing for one battle scene and a witty line… but I literally couldn't describe any of their personalities to you just differed them by name and job title.
Worldbuilding this is an urban fantasy with magic normalized in our group of characters. It felt like we kept hearing about the major power players in the world but never really interacted with any groups.... why. it was mostly Sera directly explaining it to us. also why.
“For the sake of clarity, I think I should backtrack a little. The politics between hunters and vampires are complicated."
There are a ton of vampires !
But we don't know how the organized, whether its bunch of leaders of their own groups or one central
There are witches and warlocks !
But we don't meet any or know anything else about them
There are also vampire hunters or something...
do you see a fucking pattern there?
The Plot
I wanted the adventure to be more incorporated throughout the book but it was pretty limited to the end fight scene. I mean, it took till over half the book for our characters to even come up with a plan! to actually investigate the murders and cult! bruh.
It felt like the build-up of learning the world was explained to us and took up the majority of the book !! which sadly left the actual plot and characters actually taking initiative on the actions to be the last 100 pages.
Perhaps because this is the beginning of a series-type book with a large amount of world-building and explanation that kinda turned me off.
But it was also the writing style and choices made. I mean it felt passive with Sera directly explaining sooo much to me as the reader. Like why didn't the author try to use interactions with characters and dialogue to give us that information? The main character's own background with the sister felt more reminiscent of friends who could ignore each other than a big sister sacrificing everything to a little sister that just left her. like what the actual fuck.
I recommend if you just wanna try a fun mystery and vampires because this book clearly ticks all those essentials. But you really gotta make an effort to connect to the characters so it's more about the mystery and power buildup happening with Sera instead of focusing on the characters themselves