I like the premise of this book. The cover is gorgeous, and grabbed my attention right away.

There were certain elements that didn't quite reach me, but I did end up enjoying the relationship between characters. The setting is intriguing, but it definitely was underplayed in this first novel.

Overall, I give it a 3 star rating. It has potential for more, so I'll be keeping an eye out.

Initial Thoughts
I was really intrigued when I saw this was a YA story about Vlad the Impaler. Vlad is such an interesting historical figure with a complicated history and I was eager to see how the author was going to handle that.

Some Things I Liked
I enjoyed the historical elements. I liked the use of other languages, authentic places and real family names. It felt well researched.
Andrei. He was the only character worth anything.

Some Things I Wasn’t Crazy About
Vlad. He was no vampire. He wasn’t a book boyfriend. He was a brat and he annoyed me to no end.
Ilona. It’s a bad sign when I don’t like two out of three central characters. Ilona was terribly boring and I felt like she didn’t really do anything to merit the attention of both Vlad and Andrei.
The plot and pacing. Several (what I’m assuming are pivotal) moments are only glossed over or alluded to which leaves the reader with huge gaps of time. I couldn’t understand why Vlad and Andrei both liked Ilona but it’s implied that they spend time together outside the scenes we read. Too much of the plot took place off the page and therefore the actual story was quite dull.

Series Value
I can’t see much series value here. The story isn’t set up for too much more that isn’t exactly as history played out. Furthermore, I didn’t like any of the characters enough to want to know more.

Final Thoughts
This is really a 2.5 star review for me. I struggled with this book and I think similar minded readers will feel the same issues. I will round up for a debut but I don’t feel compelled to read more.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A new take on infamous Vlad Dracula, except now with a teen love triangle. At first I was so interested in the premise... but by the time I finished the book, I just couldn’t get how flat it fell for me. The story revolves around Vlad Dracula, who has long lived in the shadow of his father and older brother, suffering their cruelties and wanting so badly to prove himself and be worthy of the throne. His only friend is his cousin Andrei Musat and both boys find themselves at odds with one another when they meet Ilona Csaki, who is newly betrothed to Vlad’s older brother who is inheriting the throne.... for now. The only things we get about Ilona is that she is gorgeous and “isn’t like other girls” because she likes science and isn’t afraid of blood. She’s throwing her feelings between both boys and is constantly just out here being “not like other girls” (sigh). The whole book mainly focuses on the love triangle between the three with Vlad essentially being the bad boy while Andrei is the nice guy. Throughout this book there are political assassinations, war, and so forth, yet all those things are essentially glossed over for this tepid love triangle. I found myself caring less and less for these unlikable characters and was just happy to have made it to the end of the book. I had high hopes for this book and was just disappointed, I do adore a Vlad Dracula take but this one just didn’t work out for me. It felt much more middle grade than young adult and all the characters were unlikable and you just can’t really find yourself caring for any of them. The only thing that I was truly invested in was Vlad versus his older brother for the throne, after that I was just left with meh for everything else.

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Swoon Reads for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Loved the premise and really wanted to love the story, but the execution fell very flat for me. The writing doesn't sing so I never felt immersed in the story. The characters also didn't feel fully fleshed out or compelling, so I wasn't invested in them--which is probably why the love triangle also didn't work for me. Furthermore, the story felt much more MG than YA; definitely not as dark as it could have been. That being said, HEART OF THE IMPALER was obviously well-researched, so those who love the history and lore of Dracula will probably enjoy this.

A perfect pick for AND I DARKEN fans!

A glimpse into the dark and twisted young life of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula). Historically accurate and sweetly haunting, the story is also told by Ilona (engaged to Vlad’s older brother) and Andrei (Vlad’s cousin). Both Vlad and Andrei fancy Ilona, but she is a pawn in Wallachian politics and her father’s machinations. She is never given a choice, until she chooses her own path. Andrei will have to choose between the man he loves like a brother and the woman who has his heart. Vlad must decide how far he is willing to go to get what he wants.

Sweet romance simmers throughout the book. Historical, cultural, and political details are woven seamlessly in the tapestry of the story.

Heart of the Impaler by Alexander Delacroix is perfect for fans of An I Darken by Kiersten White.
Loved the history side of this story, it was cool to learn that all the characters were based on real people.

It was kind of a weird read but I was entertained. Characters were a cardboard cutout of what they could have been. The comparison to the Keirsten White books was what brought me in, I would recommend this to those that wanted something similar, but I wouldn't give it as the first read.

As a hobby, I love to study Vlad Dracula as a historical figure. It is interesting to look at his life and try to find truth in the myth. I also love fictional depictions, especially romantic ones, as I see his story as more complex than a simple villain that impaled his enemies. He is a dark historical figure that incites intrigue and romance. I loved this book, especially as it can bring more interest to Vlad Tepes and his history. I intend to purchase this for my collection, but I will also be recommending this to be added to our library as well.

This book has made one of my top 5 reads of the summer. The world building was done exceptionally well, not confusing or hard to follow which was a great plus. The slow burn love triangle romance was also done very well, this coming from someone who does not usually like love triangles. Overall I would give this book 5/5 stars can’t wait for it to hit the shelves and I can get a physical copy.

3.5 stars. I went back and forth between 3 and 4 stars on this one, so 3.5.

So, I loved the history side of the story. It was one of the main reasons I wanted to read it. The author explains a bit of the history at the end of the book after the acknowledgements. It was cool to learn that basically all of the characters were real people. There is also a glossary at the end which is helpful because there are a lot of Romanian, Hungarian and Turkish words/short phrases. There is also a royal family tree which is pretty cool.

As for the story. I enjoyed it for the most part. Like I said above, I loved the historical aspect of the story, I liked Vlad's character, especially at the beginning, and the politics, though kind of confusing to me, was interesting. Reading some of the reviews, this may be a controversial take, lol, but I kind of felt bad for Vlad. His dad showed him very little attention, and when he did, it usually wasn't good, he was always second best to his brother who was constantly telling him how much he sucked. It really isn't surprising things turned out the way they did.

Now, Ilona bugged me sooooo much, as did Andrei! She is all "Vlad is so intriguing and handsome but idk if I should like that or not" and 2 minutes after he leaves and Andrei is there she is like Vlad who? I'm like seriously? Then Andrei is all meek and mild. I'm not saying that every male character needs to be super masculine, but he is just a little too meek and "let's talk this out guys." This is the 15th century; knife it out first, ask questions later.

Even after writing this whole review and re-living the book I'm still torn on the rating! Ugh!! It's just Andrei and Ilona got on my nerves and it seemed like some of the boyars and Transylvanians came out of nowhere and it was like we were supposed to know who they were. It could be that I missed them from earlier in the book because there were just SO many of them. Definitely recommend though.

A slightly awkward love triangle and some cringe parts, it’s a good read for middle schoolers. I’m curious as to where this series will go.

Ilona Csáki has no desire to marry the voivode's eldest son, but love and marriage are the least of her worries.

The royal family's enemies have already tried to put an arrow through her back—and if anyone discovers her blossoming feelings for her betrothed's cousin Andrei, and younger brother, Vlad, she may just wish they'd succeeded.

Beneath the shadow of impending war, the only battle that will be deadlier than the one for Ilona’s life will be the one for her heart.

1 Star

Hello and welcome back to where I rant about books that I didn’t like. As you can tell by the title, we are going to talk about Heart of the Impaler. This is my first one-star read, and honestly, I never thought I would read a book where I rated it one star. But alas, this day has come. So let me get into the many problems with this book.

An important rule of writing is that you don’t leave action scenes or significant scenes to the story off-screen. If you leave out these scenes, this makes the story disconnected and doesn’t show the character’s reaction to it. This happened many times, and it was infuriating. Towards the end, we have many battles that supposedly happened but we don’t know since they skipped over. Rather than getting these exciting action scenes, they glossed over, and we get boring scenes that include mainly conversations, which quickly get boring.

This is a spoiler, and I’m using this as an example to make my point above.

For example, one of our main characters, Vlad kills his older brother Mircea. But instead of seeing this, it’s glossed over, and we don’t get to read when Vlad kills him. This would be considered a pivotal moment and critical to Vlad’s character development. We do see the build-up to this scene. Before this, we see Mircea bullying Vlad and treating him as a spare part. When he kills Mircea, he then becomes the crown prince, but we don’t see him command any armies. Once again, it’s skipped over.

Spoiler over

I felt like I was waiting for the story to begin. Many times, the plot is explained through conversations. Another rule of writing is once again broken. Instead of developing the story through various scenes, the plot layout to us. We don’t need the whole story told out to us. Allow us to interpret the scenes for ourselves and try to predict what will happen next. If you put little scenes spread throughout, and there that would make it far more exciting.

You might be wondering, were the characters at least good? No, they were not.

Vlad was unbearable and one of the worst characters I have ever read. He comes off as a whiny brat that doesn’t seem to care about anyone and thinks he can get everything he wants. Many times in the story, he wants Ilona as his own. He fanaticizes over her, thinking one day she will be his. He tries to be her protector and doesn’t even try to get to know Ilona. He treats his cousin, Andrei, horribly having him do all his various chores and insults him at various times. He says Andrei is his best friend, but as soon as thought about Andrei pops into his head, which is stealing Ilona from him, he immediately believes it without any proof.

The point of Vlad’s character development is to slowly fall into madness, and see him use fear as a way to control people. His character is suppose to represent Vlad the Impaler, who used used cruel measures to inspire fear to control them. He used to impale his enemies on stakes. We do see this fall, but Vlad never started off as a “good” person. In the beginning of the book, Vlad has violent episodes if something doesn’t go his way, and thinks he can already get everything he wants. So this character development isn’t as powerful, since he never started off as a kind hearted human being.

Ilona, the love interest of Andrei and Vlad, is very uninteresting at best. She is an “I’m not like other girls.” For example, she studies birds and isn’t grossed by blood. This trope is overplayed and used so many times that it begins to get boring. Nothing about Ilona stood out to me, and she was a rather bland character. Andrei was the only decent character in this book. He at least had some personality and seemed to have actual emotions. He cared about Ilona and tried to get to know her rather than Vlad. But even he fell flat and didn’t have much appeal.

I never got a clear idea of what these characters were supposed to represent, which lead to me lacking interest in them.

The romance was painful to read, and that was the main element of this book. If I don’t care about the characters, I’m not going to care about the romance. In the synopsis, we are told there is an “Impending war,” but it is glossed over, as I mentioned earlier, only leaving the romance. This is supposed to be a dark historical story, but rather, it’s a story about a love triangle poorly executed and not much else…

There were many terms used to help build the world, but I ended up just getting confused. The world-building was not executed well and left me wondering what was happening most of the time. What didn’t help is that this story dragged quite a lot, and the dialogue felt unnatural from telling the plot word for word.

TW: Murder (Off-screen), Death (Off-Screen), Blood, fighting

Thank you to NetGallery for providing me an ARC of Heart of the Impaler in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you, NetGalley, for selecting me to read this book.

Ok...so you hear about a book that is essentially a teen love story featuring Vlad the Impaler. I know, I know, sounds like a hot mess, right? Absolutely not! I loved Heart of the Impaler! I can't wait to be able to continue the story and see how the love triangle resolves itself. In the mean time, I will most likely go read more about the actual life of Vlad the Impaler. That's what good historical fiction does....makes you want to go read more about the actual events.

Bravo, Mr Delacroix.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book early. This book will be released on December 7, 2021.

I am so excited that I got a e-arc of this because for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with Dracula and Transylvania. Just a disclaimer that this book has NOTHING to do with vampires and it is the historical fiction of Vlad Dracul, Vlad Dracula and the Wallachia throne.

If you go into this book knowing nothing of the prince and voivode, then you will probably not like this book. If you go into this book and not wanting a romance, then this is not for you. There is a love triangle between Vlad Dracul, the Grand Boyar eldest daughter Ilona and Vlad's cousin Andrei Mustaf, heir to the Moldavia throne.

With this book not being released for another couple of months, I definitely don't want to go into much detail and spoilers. There is betrayal, regicide, and executions. It goes into detail the treaty between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire. It mentions the impaling that Vlad Dracula is famous for.

Going into this I was reminded of other book series particularly Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games. It mentions a game of thrones and the characteristics between our main love interests scream Peeta and Katniss.

I absolutely loved this book. I give it a 5. I didn't know what to expect going into it. I wasn't sure I wanted to read about a romance, but I flew through it just for the romance. The ending made me anxious because I was anticipating a death of some characters.

I hope that there will be a sequel one day.

I have a soft spot in my heart for historical fiction based on real people. Imagine the audacity it must take to look at a real person and write a completely fictional story about their life. An alternate universe, if you will. Heart of the Impaler is almost 100% made up, including the characters of Andrei and Ilona. Not that that’s inherently a bad thing, just worth mentioning.

The book itself was good. It was well-written and I enjoyed reading it. but it did a few unforgivable things.

1. A lot of the action happens off page, like Vlad killing Mircea. This is a pivotal moment in the book and in Vlad’s character development. Arguably it’s the most significant scene in the book, and it’s not actually shown. We see all the build up: Mircea bullying Vlad, etc. but not the most important part. (This is actually why the book got 3 stars instead of 4. It’s unforgivable.)

2. After killing Mircea, Vlad becomes the Crown Prince and Leads the voivode’s armies, and yet we don’t see a single battle with him in command. It’s just skipped over. The book started to become really boring because every time something exciting was about to happen, the scene would change or the chapter would end.

3. This isn’t quite unforgivable, but I felt like the mystery was underdeveloped. There could have been more of Vlad and Andrei trying to investigate the wooden key or talking to more maids. “V.C.” actually was introduced early. The mystery felt like a weird side plot that seemed important at the beginning, got thrown to the wayside in the middle, and then came back when Andrei found the list of who supported whom politically. Ultimately it only became important because Andrei and Ilona were able to find allies against the voivode.

Heart of the Impaler was a good read, but honestly, somebody needs to grab the author by the shoulders and tell him that he needs to actually write the action in his book instead of just describing it.

This was kind of a dense, slow paced, love triangle driven book which was not at all what I was hoping for going into this story. I found myself very bored and struggling with some of the terminology and the language used within the story.

This book is instantly set up as a love triangle with a teenage Vlad, his friend Andrei, and a girl named Ilona who has been thrust into the society of Vlad's father's kingdom. This book was hard to get into and none of the characters were super interesting.

Heart of the Impaler is Dracula's historical fiction origin story you didn't know you needed - but won't be able to put down!

Heart of the Impaler is an intriguing historical romance about Vlad Dracul as a young man. The blend of historical fact and fiction is really well done. The book is about Vlad, his fictional cousin Andrei, and Ilona (also fictional) the girl they both fall for. Im usually not the biggest fan of love triangles but this one wasn't bad as you could tell from the beginning who would win Ilona's heart. The characters where likable and believable. The romance was absolutely sweet even if some would say predictable. I really liked the evolution of Vlad"s character throughout the book from the downtrodden "spare heir" to the blood soaked, calculating prince he is at the end.
The ending leaves the story open for another book. Im not sure if another one is planned but I would definitely check it out if it is. Overall it was an entertain and quick read that I wold recommend to anyone that enjoys historical romance and has an interest in Vlad Dracul.