Rating: 4/5 stars

Category: Fantasy, Romance, Adult, Drug abuse, Drug dealing, Suicide

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Publication date: 6^th April 2023

Pages: 432

Hello Readers, welcome back to my blog.

I finished this book on my birthday, it was a very good distraction from my thoughts on my future. You know when you are on the verge of a change and it is a little bit scary, ya, that’s where I was on my birthday. Any way, down to the review.

SYNOPSIS

In New York City where we lay our scene, two rival witch families fight to maintain control of their respective criminal ventures. On one side of the conflict are the Antonova sisters, each one beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother, the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants known only as Baba Yaga. On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose community extortion ventures dominate the shadows of magical Manhattan.

After twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side. As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.

If, that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.

Review                                              

There are 2 sets of brothers and sisters from opposing families and you are not sure at first which of them are to represent Romeo and Juliet. Then it feels like history is repeating itself when the second set of siblings begin their own love affair. The book is sectioned like a play – Act 1 scene 1 – which makes it so unique in its layout, at least I’ve never come across a novel that mirrors a play layout just because it is inspired by one. To write a novel like it is a play is such a brilliant idea, I have to applaud Olivie for that. Olivie must have used the same artist or someone who could mirror the style because the illustrations in this book are similar to the style of illustrations in The Atlas Six, which is also authored by Olivie Blake. If you want to check out my review of that after reading this, please feel free.

The staging chapter of the story was really confusing, what is the point of it? When it doesn’t give a full picture of the stage, just an impression of it – that’s my opinion of course, someone else could read it and understand perfectly. Just as Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, so is this story but t has a twist at the end that might bring comfort to some readers. I gave 4 out of 5 stars, aside from the staging bit of the story, every other element was executed well for me.

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Thank you for reading

Have a great week and God bless