This was a truly lovely story. It was unlike any other vampire story I've ever read and it had a very romantic/gothic feel without being a romance story. This was not a page-turner for me, however, it was one I wanted to savor and take my time experiencing. Anna/Anya/Collette was turned at a young age and spent her life fearing her eventual demise. It led to her becoming isolated and just going through the motions, but still experiencing really beautiful or tragic moments in history.

If you are looking for a lovely slow-burn, I would recommend giving this a go, especially as we enter into spooky season. This was very much a "curl up on the couch with a hot drink and a blanket in the rain/snow" book for me. I do wish the story was a little more fast moving, but I think that's just a personal preference as I'm typically more of a suspense/thriller fan. I genuinely enjoyed this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of "The God of Endings" by Jacqueline Holland in exchange for an honest review. This was an absolute absorbing, atmospheric, spellbinding read. Anya/Anna/Colette is an immortal woman who has suffered destruction and loss over her two century long existence ever since she was made immortal (a vampire) by her grandfather. The tale weaves back and forth between the present (sent in the 1980s) and the past as we watch her come to terms with what she perceives the end of her life. I appreciated the subtlety by which the author wove some up "lifeisms" into the story without cramming it down your throat as a reader. Without giving anything away, I maybe expected the side story with Katherine/Dave/Leo to be going somewhere else but I liked where it ended up. Overall this was a fantastic read and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

So, the writing in this book was pretty good. It was detailed but still easy to read. I thought the premise was interesting. This was definitely a more unique take on a vampire story. I loved reading the details about the French preschool that Anna was running, and a lot of those scenes were delightfully cozy. However, the book was too long, and there were too many simultaneous conflicts. The scope was way too grand. Many of the scenes were nice to read, but they didn’t contribute to the overarching plot or do much for character development. They just added more insignificant names and locations into the mix. I was really invested until around the halfway mark, after which I started to get bored as the story dragged on and situations became senselessly awful.

I feel like the author set the beginning of the story way too early in time. The time skips were drastic and jarring. Major world events were barely mentioned or skipped over altogether, and the WWII section in particular was very strange. Anna suddenly became a vigilante murderer of Nazi soldiers who was slurping their blood up like it was some good soup. I thought she had always refused to drink human blood though… It also made no sense why she couldn’t have removed all of the evidence from her shed or why she didn’t tell the men that she was American.

The section with Dream and Sergio was interesting, so I wish more had been done with that setting. It was honestly kind of random, but the ambience was really good. Story wise, they barely had any impact. They might as well have been nameless. I felt similarly about Halla and the Alexandria arc.

Paul was probably one of my favorite characters, and I liked his relationship with Anna. It felt like a meaningful way to show the beginning of her history with art. The author really could have done more with Josef, for the sake of Anna’s character development at the very least.

Unfortunately, since Anna faced virtually no consequences for her actions in the present-day timeline, it ended up just feeling very low-stakes. The tension was there, but I quickly realized that she would Mary Sue her way out of everything.

Fortunately, the ending was rather satisfying.

This was beautiful. Holland has such a way with words - this was almost lyrical in how masterfully it was written. It's tonally really interesting and gripping, I can't recommend it enough if you're a fan of the summary.

The God of Endings is a lyrical, ambient and atmospheric tale. The prose and writing moves heavily through the saga like a hand cutting through mist. Part fictionalized memoir of the main character and part thriller - the story weaves together a morose and relatable tale of what it means and feels like to long for something without a name just for it to be not only indescribable - but forever just out out of reach and stolen away. At first you may feel that this is a story of eternal life's existentialism. You would not explicitly be wrong, but this novel has so much more to offer than just vampiric ennui.

This novel is perfect for fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, atmospheric tales with a hint of dark academia, and best on a cold night by a warm fire.

This was a big, epic, sweeping tale of an immortal woman (a vampire) and her life in the past and present, through alternating chapters. It was very easy to get lost in this story and follow it as it moved through the years. A very engaging and thoughtful saga. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

The God of Endings is a tragic and beautiful story following one immortal woman's life. Alternating between her past and present to tell her story. I love a good Vampire book and this one has a very "sad girl" vampire that I can only describe as Miss Honey from Matilda and her struggle with the loneliness of her solitary life and her sadness about all the loved ones she has lost over the centuries. This book really blew me away. A depressed vampire to rival Anne Rice's Louis.

Really nice to read, actually kind of scary and included a lot of really interesting vampire lore. It was a bit long-winded and a tad slow, and somehow I still feel like I was missing out on a lot of details, especially about Czernobog. I felt like I wanted more from the story, but it was already very long. I quite enjoyed reading it, I was completely enthralled by the flashbacks to her early vampire life. The stuff happening in “present day“ (the 1980s) wasn’t as interesting, but it was certainly suspenseful. I rounded up from 3.5 because it was pretty good. Thanks netgalley for the ARC!

The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland reminds me of Alice Hoffman's writing style in The Red Garden, which I also enjoyed reading. The main character may be a vampire, but the story is not the usual fantasy tale. It does not sensationalize vampirism. It is more about one woman's struggle of accepting who she is, keeping the darker part of her life away from society, and learning from her past mistakes. In the 150 years of her life covered by this tale, she is forced to constantly reckon with her lack of power as a woman and her need for blood to survive. The descriptions of violence are brief, but do exist. I completely enjoyed this book and look forward to buying it in print.

Jacqueline Holland is a wonderful story teller. The characters are well developed. You can feel their pain, joy, and struggles through the story telling. The vivid descriptions of differing eras, landscapes, and places are written beautifully.
I read that this is the author's first novel. That is hard to believe. I hope that it will not be the last!

Wow. Masterfully woven story.

This was almost immediately one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.

I don’t have enough words to describe this book, so let me just say that I highly recommend it.

I will be buying copies for my friends!

Unique and absoloutely breathtaking prose. Pick this one up if it interests you as I was immediatly gripped by the synopsis and it was a grand adventure. Looking forward to reading more from this author as it was a fantastic debut. I adored it so much. A new favourite forever.

I really liked the premise of this book, and the writing was beautiful, but I found the pace to be too slow for my liking. The book sometimes seemed confusing as well. I still liked it but I didn’t like it as much as I hoped to.