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A review by kays_reading_journal
This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings
Did not finish book. Stopped at 56%.
2.5/5 stars. DNFed at 56% and skimmed the rest.
This Ravenous Fate is a Sapphic YA Historical Fantasy that switches between the perspectives of Layla, a reaper (vamp) and Elise, the heir to a reaper hunter empire. Sounds amazing right? Eh
I, along with many other reviewers, was so excited to dive into this book. But it just didn’t deliver. I was originally going to try to push through and finish it, until I read other reviews and found that it didn’t get better.
I found the murder mystery plot to be boring, the Worldbuilding to not be well described, and the relationship between the main characters to be lacking.
The plot is slow. The first 25% sets up what the synopsis already told us, the next 25% (and possibly more) was Elise and Layla meeting every few days to search for a murderer. But this was not an exciting adventure- it was a boring few paragraphs about everything going wrong and the two of them sucking at their jobs.
This is a childhood friends, to enemies, to lovers- but there aren’t sufficient flashbacks to show their previous friendship, or even why they became enemies. Because this isn’t established, the dynamic was off putting, and also made it difficult to understand when they started to develop feeling for each other.
Elise is also pretty unlikable. I understand that unlikable narrators are some peoples jams, but she wasn’t marketed this way.
As for the worldbuilding, we’re kinda just told that this takes place in 1920s New York, but the setting isn’t really built upon. There’s a few aspects of the book that rely on prohibition, but I had a really difficult time imagining the world. The characters felt as if they were taken from 2024 and put into the 1920s.
I am truly confused by the higher reviews. I wish I could’ve loved this! I just feel like we read completely different books.
I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.
This Ravenous Fate is a Sapphic YA Historical Fantasy that switches between the perspectives of Layla, a reaper (vamp) and Elise, the heir to a reaper hunter empire. Sounds amazing right? Eh
I, along with many other reviewers, was so excited to dive into this book. But it just didn’t deliver. I was originally going to try to push through and finish it, until I read other reviews and found that it didn’t get better.
I found the murder mystery plot to be boring, the Worldbuilding to not be well described, and the relationship between the main characters to be lacking.
The plot is slow. The first 25% sets up what the synopsis already told us, the next 25% (and possibly more) was Elise and Layla meeting every few days to search for a murderer. But this was not an exciting adventure- it was a boring few paragraphs about everything going wrong and the two of them sucking at their jobs.
This is a childhood friends, to enemies, to lovers- but there aren’t sufficient flashbacks to show their previous friendship, or even why they became enemies. Because this isn’t established, the dynamic was off putting, and also made it difficult to understand when they started to develop feeling for each other.
Elise is also pretty unlikable. I understand that unlikable narrators are some peoples jams, but she wasn’t marketed this way.
As for the worldbuilding, we’re kinda just told that this takes place in 1920s New York, but the setting isn’t really built upon. There’s a few aspects of the book that rely on prohibition, but I had a really difficult time imagining the world. The characters felt as if they were taken from 2024 and put into the 1920s.
I am truly confused by the higher reviews. I wish I could’ve loved this! I just feel like we read completely different books.
I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.