(Disclaimer--I'm quite biased, but I do genuinely love this book anyway!)

Readers who like atmospheric fantasy, apocalyptic stakes, gallows humor, RomCom-style banter, and characters who can't resist cracking inappropriate jokes while the world crumbles around them, will enjoy this debut!

This is a very well written fantasy. It's more quiet than other high-octane stories, but no less engaging. The book moves at a steady pace as Alessa prepares for the demon invasion, forms and strengthens relationships with the cast, and struggles to overcome her guilt and fears. It's a nice chance to see a protagonist accept her dire situation rather than run from it or fight it.

I think this books strongest pursuit are the characters. We slowly grow to love each and every supporting character and now that I've finished, I'm more than happy to learn more about them in the next book, especially Renata. I think she's an amazing badass older-sister-type.

The romance was gradual and I'd guessed Dante's "betrayal" pretty early on, but I was glad it wasn't dragged out. Dante is the brooding, strong, protective type-- my favorite type-- and I pretty much gobbled up any and all of his scenes.

The ending was slightly confusing and abrupt. It doesn't end on a cliffhanger, but it does leave you with a few questions, no doubt going to be answered in the upcoming books.

My only critique, which is small, is about Alessa's parents/family. They seemed insignificant? I think their presence would've held more weight if we were given glimpses into Alessa's past, moments she cherished, moments she regretted, their family dynamic, their traditions. Otherwise, I felt no connection to any of her family members.

But other than that, I look forward to reading the next book! Can't wait to continue Alessa's journey!

This Vicious Grace lived up to every expectation and so much more. What a lush, romantic fantasy with pitch-perfect banter, swoony heroes, and a seriously kick-ass heroine. I could not put it down.

Every once in a while you read a book and you just page through it because the story is easy to follow and the characters are likable and nice to read about. For me This Vicious Grace fell exactly into that kind of category.
Alessa and Dante were both fun, engaging, and interesting. Their romance was great I was living for Alessa and Dante’s interactions.
This is not a book you are going to want to miss!

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was really great! A compelling concept, a really likeable cast of characters, “butterflies in your stomach” romance, and a fascinating system of magic. I didn’t really know what to expect, and this book was a LOT of fun.

I do wish we’d had some more world building, and I’m hoping we get some more background in the next book. I also would have LOVED to see a map, but alas, I read a digital galley, so I’m hoping there’s one in the finished book.

Loved it, but hate how long I’m going to have to wait for book two!!

For fans of: Caraval, Sorcery of Thorns, Frostblood

**Review will be published on my blog/Instagram June 23rd, 2022**

THAT WAS SOMETHING.

I feel perplexed by my thoughts on this one.

We’ll start here. On one hand, I had a hard time putting this down. The writing was great and captivating. Easy to follow and fly through. I LOVED the banter between the love interests Alessa and Dante. And hello, a bodyguard romance? YUP. You read that right. The build-up was sweet and I liked how they got to know each other and connected on multiple levels.

I also did liked this cast of characters. Everyone had different personalities and nobody blended into the background. I would have loved even more background on Alessa’s new group of friends to solidify those relationships even more.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t call this a strong fantasy. It leans heavily to the romance (which is fine for me), but not hard enough into the world building and magic system. Things were laid out well, yet as I was finishing the book I realized some aspects just didn’t make sense? It’s hard to explain, but as a devout fantasy lover there were things missing for me.

Definitely still interested in the second book. I think that has a lot of potential and I would looooove to see where this romance can go. Can’t wait!

Overall audience notes:
- YA/NA Fantasy Romance
- Language: a little
- Romance: vague open door
- Violence: physical and magical altercations, creature attacks
- Trigger/Content Warnings: attempted murder, near death experiences, kidnapping, imprisonment, mentions of past child abuse, thoughts of suicide (and others trying to convince the MC to commit suicide)

Loved the vivid, interesting secondary fantasy world Thiede built, but even better were the character dynamics, particularly the connection and banter between Alessa and Dante. Alessa herself grows in wonderful ways, finding the courage to lead and take up space, not because of her position, but just because she's a person and shouldn't have to make herself less.

A thrilling fantasy with the bodyguard trope and the perfect amount of banter. Need I say more? Yes? Okay, fine. A exhilarating plot rich with parts based on Italy, an unlikely band of friends that come together to save the day, and a love that makes you want to squeal anytime they so much as look at each other. I seriously need book 2 like yesterday!

What a sheer DELIGHT to read.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a book this fun. The story is fresh with Italian-inspired culture and lush writing, nuanced characters and witty banter that made me cackle out loud more than once. Alessa is a refreshing protagonist—she’s sweet, spunky, pleasantly extroverted and oh so witty. And Dante is everything I like in a book boyfriend, so there. Their relationship was SO delightfully slow-burn with the perfect amount of depth and development. Authors, take notes—this is how you write a believable ship. Not to mention the enemies-to-friends and found family vibes SATURATING the story.

This Vicious Grace was glorious, and I’m dying for the second book already. This is definitely a comfort read, one I’ll come back to anytime I need to get out of a book slump. Highly recommend.

-A

Eternal gratefulness to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

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!

This was such a wonderful read. I'm a sucker for the disgruntled pelican/hired gun trope. Add in that he's also a bodyguard to a demon fighting sorceress chosen by fate to save the world and I am IN.

Emily Thiede has such a great knack for writing love stories, I'm genuinely excited to see what else she writes in the future. While Thiede excels in world building, beautiful descriptions, and character development, the undeniable chemistry between Alessa and Dante is THE winner in my eyes. I could read only A&D talking/bickering/flirting for hours and never get bored.

I'm very much looking forward to the next book in this series!

First thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc.

This Vicious Grace is Emily Thiede debut YA Fantasy and the first book in a new serie.

Alessa have received a gift from the gods, but instead of magnify a partner’s magic, it kill every suitor she touches. She still need a partner since she was chosen to stop the apocalypse, but she can't figure out how to stop her gift from killing everyone she touches.

Since her own guard as started to rebel againts her and that a rebellion is exploding outside the gates she hires Dante, an outcast who have been marked as a killer, as her personnal bodyguard. Could he also be the one who can help her master her gift?

I have really loved this book and looking foward to read the sequel!

“‘You know that isn’t really from them, right? That’s written by mortals. Men, mostly. We have a bad habit of locking up people who scare us, and the thing that scares men with power most is a woman with more of it.’”

Alessa, as the Finestra, has a goddess-given power to slay the demons that are coming for her home. The only problem is that she can’t harness it without a partner, and she’s accidentally killed the last three she touched. Her guardians are scrambling to find her a new Fonte with only weeks left until the attack. Worried about assassination attempts, she hires a street-fighter, Dante, to be her bodyguard. She isn’t expecting that Dante, of all people, might be the one to help her control her power, or that his secrets might be even deadlier than her own. I received an invitation to read a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books. Trigger warnings: death, severe injury, violence, some blood/gore, bug horror, grief. Some mild NSFW content.

This has been a long time coming, but I’m probably going to stop picking up and accepting review copies for YA fantasy for a while. I can read the same stories over and over again in my favorite genres, but fantasy isn’t one of them, and the market is flooded with them right now. There’s nothing actually wrong with this book, and I can see that. There’s just little that sets it apart from the hundred other YA fantasy books that are out right now, except possibly the world-building, and that’s typically not one of the things I look for in my reading. All that is to say that you should take this review with a grain of salt. I’m done with this genre for now, but that’s certainly no fault of This Vicious Grace.

Alessa is a pretty typical YA heroine, the chosen one with powers she doesn’t understand. Her love interest, Dante, is also a pretty typical snarky, standoffish YA hero with a dark past. Again, there’s nothing wrong with those tropes, and while they don’t really break the mold, I enjoyed the development of their relationship over the course of the novel. Dante helps her understand herself and her power better, and the other characters end up bringing a fun, super-powered group dynamic to the novel.

The pace lags a little in the middle before Alessa starts interacting with much of anyone besides Dante, but it’s by no means a killing blow to what’s mostly a solid story. The world-building is unique and well-done without being overwhelming, and it’s probably one of the biggest draws to this book for people who like that sort of thing. The end battle is quite gruesome, but it goes on a little long to sustain interest or tension. The end wraps up the current plot but leaves some open-ended questions for the rest of the series. I was satisfied enough to leave the story here and won’t be continuing with it.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

This Vicious Grace is a unique gem that has somehow managed to be perfect for the time it’s coming out in. Even though it is a fantasy set in a completely different world, with no mention of plagues real or imagined, This Vicious Grace is perfect for the isolated time period we find ourselves in. This is because the main conflict of the protagonist Alessa involves her isolation and her inability to connect with other people. Her touch is deadly and her culture, while emphasizing connection for others, insists on isolating her from everyone except the partner that can bear her deadly touch. Except instead of bearing her touch and giving her their magic power, Alessa’s last three partners have dropped dead. One of TVG’s many strengths is the portrayal of Alessa’s struggle with loneliness and longing for companionship. It is a struggle that will be all too relatable to any modern reader, who, like Alessa, has been forced to keep their distance from others for their own protection.
Another strength of TVG is the multifaceted nature of many of the side characters. By the end I found myself hating characters I started out loving, and loving characters I’d once loathed.
One aspect of TVG that I really appreciated was the use of Italian. TVG is set on an Italian inspired island, and Italian is used as a stand-in for the ancient language. Proverbs in Italian are at the start of each chapter (along with an English translation) and the love interest is fluent in it and uses words and phrases frequently. As someone who is learning Italian, I loved getting the chance to see what I could understand. (And for those that aren’t fluent or even learning Italian, the meanings of anything important are clarified either explicitly or with context clues, so you won’t be lost.)
Overall, This Vicious Grace is an addictive read. When it releases on June 28th of this year, be sure to give it a chance. You won’t be disappointed.

Okay, but this is SUCH an original fantasy and it gave me Mummy vibes and I'm not mad about it. (Also didn't know it was a duopoly when I went into it and had ALL KINDS OF FEELS knowing I would get to see these characters again.)

Seriously already a best in show of 2022 for me <3

The story started out a bit slow and confusing bc of the worldbuilding, but then once I got used to all the characters and the plot, I was immensely surprised at how much I adored Alessa—she did come off a bit whiny in some parts bc of what she had to accomplish (saving her entire island from demons) but she eventually overcame that.

NOW the real thing I wanna talk about is how much I adored Dante and Alessa’s relationship. Their banter, Dante’s sullen facade and sarcastic quips, Alessa getting under his skin and making him melt—UGH it was so cute I think the romance is the key selling point of this book tbh.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of This Vicious Grace in exchange for an honest review!

I starting this one on the first day of 2022 and it was SUCH a good way to start off the year. Literally what Serpent and Dove wishes it was. Enemies to lovers where the characters can both be annoying dorks without also annoying the reader? Few and far between but This Vicious Grace rocks it while also balancing plot intrigue. For extra context if you're seeing this review on goodreads: I normally hate guy-girl enemies to lovers fantasy! I am very very gay so big strong manly man assholes don't really appeal to me the way they're supposed to (I will punt both Tamlin and Rhysand to the moon the moment I'm ever given the opportunity) so the romance in this one never once pissing me off? God tier.

Also! Love the emphasis on friendship characters and a sense of found family but I do wish we got a few more scenes of them warming up to Alessa. Her relationship with Dante was well established and definitely could have handled a few scenes being given to her friends instead so it felt more earned when they suddenly get really close. I'm really hoping they're expanded on more in the sequel though.

I've had my eye on this book for forever and it was un-put-down-able.

Alessa is probably the worst Finestra in history. She's meant to choose and train with a Fonte so she can amplify their magic and stop Divorando, the regular return of monsters to the island. Problem is, she keeps killing her Fontes by mistake. Three down, and not many left brave enough to put themselves forward. No one can withstand her touch, and she's running out of time. Worse, her people are losing faith in her. Priests denounce her in the streets and assassination attempts wait around every corner. When she's unsure if she can even trust her mentors, Alessa resorts to desperate measures and hires a man from the docks as her bodyguard. What follows is a tale of magic, banter, and swooniness that was so worth the wait!

What makes this book leap off the page is the incredible character voice. Alessa is a force to be reckoned with when written by Thiede. The poor girl is really just doing her best, damn it. And by that, I mean trying her hardest not to kill people with a brush of her finger while also being in desperate need of a hug. Man, I loved Alessa so much. She has such a unique situation and yet she is so incredibly relatable. She's lonely, unable to touch a soul and her family kept at arms-length, but has the most morbid sense of humour about it all. I snorted so many times over her little zingers as she falls into despair and angst.

I must applaud Thiede for her writing. She took a rather complex world and fed it to me in the most manageable bites. Between the magic, the lore, the concept of Finestra and Fonte, the Italian scattered throughout--what could have been incredibly convoluted was explained really well and kept clear all the way through. Every time a new Finestra rises, she has five years to prepare for the coming of monsters. To be Finestra is to be next to a goddess, and she is separated from the plebs and treated as divinity, even if she is an 18-year-old girl and doesn't want that. In those five years, she must select a Fonte to partner with. A Finestra's magic doesn't do anything on its own, but when paired with a Fonte, she can take their magic and amplify it. Wind, fire, water, changing matter--she'll pick whichever will give her the best chance to defeat her wave of monsters and protect the entire island.

Dante may very well be one of my favourite YA love interests. I mean, how could you not love him? The boy puts Alessa first in every way and I could not get enough of the two of them together. Plus their relationship arc was beautifully developed. From begrudging employer and employee to tentative friends, then onwards to magical partners and pining lovers. His chemistry with Alessa was incredible. And did I mention the banter? The pair of them have the best humour, and so. Much. INNUENDO. Drunk Alessa and Dante are truly everything, and I want that scene immortalized by every piece of fan art.

It's early days but I have a feeling this is going to be one of my absolute favourite reads of the year and I cannot wait for the sequel!

**Received a copy for review.**
This is the first book in a series.
I loved the Italian influence along with the nods to various mythologies. Of course, there is a chosen one but her ability is not exactly toy what’s you’d expect.
I got vibes of a trapped person wanting to be one of her people, like Jasmine in Aladdin.
I appreciated that there is a team element but not in a traditional way. The characters are still developing but didn’t feel flat.
It has great potential and I plan to read the next book.

This book was great. I thought character development was top notch. I usually like the main character but I actually related to Alessa, which is rare. The best parts were those small moments of character development, getting to know our cast of finestra, fonti and ghoitte. Loved the tease at the end, a great setup for the sequel to come. My only complaint is that the sex scene struck me as cheesy. There aren’t many sex scenes in YA books and I applaud this one for having one. Usually if a romance is done well in a YA book, I’m in knots, thinking “just do it already!” This one however ended up making me feel less invested in the relationship simply because it had been such a beautiful buildup of friendship and attraction. I think I just wanted a bit more build up to the sex and let a girl have some multiple orgasms!